Knut Hamsun Research Articles

Psychological upheavals of the main character in the Novel “Hunger” by Knut Hamsun

Psychological upheavals of the main character in the Novel “Hunger” by Knut Hamsun

«Налаживаю связь с заграницей по поводу моего “Ял-Мала”»: Письмо харбинского литератора Василия Логинова к Михаилу Осоргину

The article examines the history of the book “Yal-Mal” (1930) by the forgotten Kharbin poet, writer, and journalist Vasily Stepanovich Loginov (1891–1945/1946?). The author uses descriptive and historical-functional research methods. The article focuses on the publication of Loginov’s letter to Mikhail Osorgin, where he responds to Osorgin’s opinions regarding his impressions of “Yal-Mal.” In 1931, Loginov purposefully distributed the book among émigrés. The appendix to the article also contains other reviews and responses to the book that appeared in both eastern (Harbin, Shanghai) and western (Prague) émigré publications. Also, the book appears among publications received by the Parisian journal “Sovremennye Zapiski” for a review. The critics who wrote about the book did not appreciate the dystopian story “Yal-Mal (Half-Rotted Letters in a Box),” however they noted the writer’s skill in addressing Siberian and Ural themes. They also mentioned the book’s cover that reproduced Mikhail Vrubel’s painting “Pan,” and concluded the writer’s inherent pantheism and the literary influence of Knut Hamsun. The author’s hopes for recognition and wide dissemination of the book have failed, but its fate allows us to speak of “Yal-Mal” as an accomplished “literary fact.” The article makes a significant clarification to the writer’s bibliography: the mention of his book “Kharbin in Verse (Everyday Pictures),” printed under the pen name “Captain Cook” in Paris, allows to set the year of its publication as 1927 (not 1932 as it was considered earlier).

Image of the Russian Tsar Peter in the works by Strindberg and other Scandinavian fin de siècle writers

The article deals with the image and the characterization of Russia’s tsar Peter the Great in a number of texts by some prominent Scandinavian writers from the turn of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The main focus is though on a short story “The Great” (English transl. “The Great Czar”) from the collection “Historical Miniatures” (1905) by August Strindberg. Surprisingly enough this text proofs to be an example of a highly apologetic narration of the famous Russian ruler and his doings. In the analysis suggested the reception of Peter is set against the background of Strindberg’s complicated relation to Peter’s foe Carl XII of Sweden, as well as to the Swedish writer’s self-perception within the contemporary literary circles. Moreover, “The Great” proves to be a manifestation of a providential view of history proclaimed by the author. In contrast to Strindberg his fellow nationals Selma Lagerlöf and Verner von Heidenstam suggest a much less complimentary interpretation of both tsar Peter and the time of his rule. On the other hand, the Danish Georg Brandes and Norway’s Knut Hamsun express quite acclamatory, though in the case of Hamsun vaguely based, views of Peter I. This lets us to conclude that the depiction of the monarch by the authors mentioned tells us more about themselves than about the tsar in question.

Sámi Literature in Norwegian Language Arts Textbooks

Sámi Literature in Norwegian Language Arts Textbooks

Knut Hamsuns Pan og Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness

The article examines similarities between ”Glahns død. Et papir fra 1861”, i.e., the second part of Knut Hamsun’s novel Pan (1894), and Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (1899). The comparative analysis demonstrates that the two texts have several common features both in terms of setting, thematic aspects and narrative technique. Both ”Glahns død” and Heart of Darkness take as a point of departure a riverboat journey into the jungle. Both texts thematize the differences between the European civilization and the “uncivilized” exotic world and focus on the contrasts between the civilized and the primitive life, the rational and the irrational behavior. Both stories are narrated by a male narrator personality that is strongly fascinated by another man, and in each case the text involves a partially unreliable witness type of narrator. The article describes some of these common features as modernist and confirms the position of both novels in early modernism.

A thematological comparison between the texts “Sult” by Knut Hamsun and “Der Hungerkünstler” by Franz Kafka and the film “The Hunger Games” by Gary Ross

In this study, a thematological comparison is made between Knut Hamsun's (1859-1952) “Sult” (1890) and Franz Kafka's (1883-1924) “Der Hungerkünstler” (1922) and the film “The Hunger Games” (2012) directed by Gary Ross (1956-). In this study, which theoretically falls within the scope of comparatistics (comparative literary studies), two cult texts by two distinguished authors from Norwegian and Austrian literature and a famous feature film are analysed comparatively on the axis of a common theme. Knut Hamsun, the Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun gained worldwide fame with his novel, originally titled “Sult” in Norwegian and translated into Turkish as “Hunger”. The novel, which has autobiographical features, explores the inner world of the main character, who is a writer like Hamsun himself and suffers from both mental and spiritual starvation, while also addressing the changes in social-cultural values, perspectives and living conditions. In his narrative “The Hunger Artist” (“Der Hungerkünstler”), Franz Kafka tells the story of a man who becomes a professional hunger artist and makes a living by starving himself for a long time. In the film “The Hunger Games”, a young woman living in poverty and other lower-class people like her fight for life and death in a game played by the upper classes. The aim of the study is to compare the common theme we have identified in these two cult texts representing the epic genre written in two different European countries with the cinema film “The Hunger Games”, a different media (art) product that became famous in our country in a short time. In this way, the aim of the study is to reveal the similarities and/or differences in the theme of hunger in different arts/media of different times, different countries and different arts/media, and to reveal the basic phenomenon lying behind this, namely the criticism of the bourgeoisie capitalist order, the main common target where the arrows of criticism of the artists meet. (Extended English summary is at the end of this document) Özet Bu çalışmada Knut Hamsun'un (1859-1952) “Sult” (1890) ve Franz Kafka'nın (1883-1924) “Der Hungerkünstler” (1922) adlı metinleri ve Gary Ross’un (1956-) yönettiği “The Hunger Games” (2012) adlı sinema filmi arasında tematolojik bir karşılaştırma yapılmıştır. Kuramsal açıdan komparatistiğin (karşılaştırmalı yazınbilim) kapsam alanına giren bu çalışmada, Norveç ve Avusturya yazınlarından iki seçkin yazarın iki kült metni ile ünlü bir sinema filmi, ortak bir tema ekseninde karşılaştırmalı olarak analiz edilmiştir. Nobel edebiyat ödüllü Norveçli yazar Knut Hamsun, Norveççe orijinal adı “Sult” olan ve Türkçeye “Açlık” diye çevrilen romanıyla dünya çapında bir ün kazanmıştır. Otobiyografik özellikler taşıyan roman, Knut Hamsun’un kendisi gibi bir yazar olup hem zihinsel hem de ruhsal açıdan büyük bir açlık çeken ana karakterin iç dünyasını keşfe çıkarken, toplumsal-kültürel değerlerin, bakış açılarının ve yaşam koşullarının değişimini de ele alır. Franz Kafka “Açlık Sanatçısı” (“Der Hungerkünstler”) adlı anlatısında, profesyonel bir açlık sanatçısı olup uzun zaman aç kalarak geçimini sağlayan bir adamın öyküsünü anlatır. “Açlık Oyunları” (“The Hunger Games”) filminde ise yoksulluk içerisinde yaşayan genç bir kadının ve onun gibi diğer alt sınıftan gelen insanların, üst sınıflar tarafından oynatılan oyundaki ölüm-kalım savaşını anlatır. Çalışmanın amacı; iki farklı Avrupa ülkesinde kaleme alınan epik türün temsilcisi bu iki kült metinde tespit ettiğimiz ortak temayı, ülkemizde de kısa sürede ünlenen farklı bir medya (sanat) ürünü olan “The Hunger Games” adlı sinema filmiyle karşılaştırmaktır. Bu şekilde çalışmada ulaşılmak istenen hedef; açlık temasının farklı zamanların, farklı ülkelerin, farklı sanatlarında/ medyalarında hangi açılardan benzerlik ve/ veya farklılıklar gösterdiğini ortaya koyarak, bunun arka planında yatan temel olguyu, yani sanatçıların eleştiri oklarının buluştuğu asıl ortak hedefi, burjuvazi kapitalist düzen eleştirisini açığa kavuşturmaktır.

On Earth and in My House

On Earth and in My House

Nietzsche, Hamsun, and Sacred Violence

This article deals with the analysis of neo-mythological and pantheistic subjects in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Knut Hamsun. The analytical comparison of Nietzsche’s philosophical concepts and Hamsun’s literary psychologism is poised to find an underlying understanding of human nature at the confluence of ethics and aesthetics - of goods and beauty, of evil and ugly. A precise definition of the aesthetic categories “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” is carried out based on Nietzsche’s work “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music”. The relevance of the Dionysian culture’s phenomena is based on the Nietzschean belief in an Übermensch within the modern mindset. The concept of “Dionysus” finds its continuation in the postmodern philosophy of Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, in such archaic emotional and aesthetic aspects of human essence as violence and sacrifice understood in an extremely abstract sense. The authors stress that modern culture’s interest in violence and sacrifice is rooted in Nietzsche’s idea of Dionysius in the meaning of one of the beginnings of any segment of European culture. The foundations for overcoming postmodernism in the 21st century and the subsequent development of aesthetic views can be found in an attempt to revise the foundation of European culture through rethinking the concept of Übermensch-Zarathustra-Dionysus.

Iselin as Object of Desire in Knut Hamsun's Pan and Victoria

Iselin as Object of Desire in Knut Hamsun's <i>Pan</i> and <i>Victoria</i>

Arctic Drama to Sámi Theatre – Cultural Clashes Towards Decolonisation: In Shared Dialogic Spaces

Summary This article deals with the concept of Arctic Drama, which is about how there is a relationship between drama and cultural clashes in the perspective of shared cultures in the northern Scandinavian area, which is defined as arctic in the geographical sense. In this vast area the Sámi people historically and to the present day have been living from reindeer herding in a nomadic lifestyle, giving them a close relationship to nature. Norwegians and Swedes colonised this area historically, especially the coast for fishing.There have been strong cultural clashes since the Viking ages, but colonisation mainly started later by introducing Christianity by force in the 16th century. Since the Romantic age, these ethno-cultural clashes have been reflected in drama and theatre, and some plays by Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun echo these tensions. An independent theatre of the Sámi people as well as of other indigenous people in Greenland and Canada, like the Inuits, would also develop some theatrical strategies based in a dramaturgy that could be described as a “spiral dramaturgy”. Cultural independence has contributed to a decolonisation process, contributing to even out the cultural clashes in theatre and drama, which could be defined as postcolonial towards decolonisation. This article focuses on the area of arctic Scandinavia.

Out of the ruins: Knut Hamsun’s ‘idealism’ and the inheritance of World War I

In 1920, the Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun won the Nobel Prize for literature for his novel Markens grøde ( Growth of the Soil) (1917). This article explores some of the key contexts for this work, highlighting the author’s own ambitions, the reasons why he sided with Germany during the war, and his generally völkisch perspectives on the Germanic and Nordic. It furthermore analyses the early reception of this World War I novel, and how it was first subjected to a number of positive readings and seen as an example of idealism, before being appropriated by Nazism.

Vigdis HjorthLong Live the Post Horn! by Charlotte Barslund

0 only probed Plath’s family history more deeply than previous biographers, but she also includes the commentary of friends not previously consulted. Additionally, she draws on a wealth of other new material , including the complete Ted Hughes archives and the voluminous research for a biography of Plath by the scholar Harriet Rosenstein that was never published. Clark’s aim is to “reposition” Plath “as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.” This is the only biography of Sylvia Plath that has ever given me a logical way to think about why she decided to end her life. Clark convincingly argues that both the combination of potent medications Plath was taking for depression during her final weeks as well as her fear of again being forced to submit to electroshock therapy, an experience that had previously so traumatized her that she vowed never to allow herself to undergo it again, contributed significantly to her decision. Yet Plath’s struggles with depression had always existed in counterpoise with the instinctive pull she had also felt toward optimism and hope. “Wintering,” the final poem in the original manuscript of Ariel that she left on her desk the morning of her death, ends: “The bees are flying. / They taste the spring.” Rita Signorelli-Pappas Princeton, New Jersery Karl Ove Knausgaard In the Land of the Cyclops Trans. Martin Aitken. New York. Archipelago Books. 2021. 350 pages. IN HIS NEW COLLECTION of essays, In the Land of the Cyclops, Karl Ove Knausgaard continues to use writing as a process to defamiliarize and move beyond the world as one knows it. The subjects of the essays for the most part center on visual artists and writers: Cindy Sherman, Gustave Flaubert, Anselm Kiefer, and Knut Hamsun, among many others. Knausgaard approaches these subjects directly, eschewing a dense critical style in favor of the personal and rigorous fascination with the subject itself that informed his monograph on Edward Munch, So Much Longing in So Little Space. As with Munch, Knausgaard at times vanishes in his intense scrutiny of his subjects. Those familiar with Knausgaard’s epic My Struggle will find his shift into essay writing a natural evolution. That series was defined by two separate impulses , the first being the excavation of Knausgaard ’s personal life in which he chronicles the challenges and mundanities of modern life in exacting detail. The second impulse, however, tended toward expansive inquiry, most notably in the last volume, where a four-hundred-plus-page essay on Adolf Hitler is tucked away in the middle of the book. Both impulses are on display in this collection in which Knausgaard continually returns to thoughts of boundaries, the absolute, differentiation, sameness, and defamiliarization, both in terms of his subjects and his own life. His strategy, irksome to some but exciting for others, is to bring the reader right up to the precipice of insight before lodging a question and disappearing. Knausgaard is less interested in answers than in authentic engagement with the world. This appears to be his primary interest as a writer and is summed up neatly in an early essay where Knausgaard recalls his joy as a teenager flying on an airplane for the first time. “I was sixteen when I last felt something I’d never felt before,” he recalls. “It was sensational. I was looking out the window of the plane, looking at the clouds, the landscape beneath them, when I got this intense feeling of the world. It was as if I had never seen it before then.” In the Land of the Cyclops is another worthy addition to Knausgaard’s oeuvre that aims to recapture this intense feeling and to see the world anew. Phillip Garland St. Louis, Missouri Vigdis Hjorth Long Live the Post Horn! Trans. Charlotte Barslund. New York. Verso. 2020. 196 pages. FOR HER SPLENDID Will and Testament (2019), Vigdis Hjorth allegedly based her narrative on family history (WLT, Spring 2020, 100). The autofiction occasioned a literary squabble that led to a rebuttal novel. This time, Hjorth’s slim but fulfilling WORLDLIT.ORG 89 novel focuses on a piece of recent Norwegian history. In 2011 the European Union considered allowing competition...

Norwegian emigration and the emergence of modernity in Norway: America letters and the cases of Knut Hamsun and Sigbjørn Obstfelder

Norway was going through important changes in the 19th century. It was a time of disruption, when the old rural society was transformed by the growing industrialisation, by the development of transportation and the expansion of free trade, when internal migration reached its peak as farmers struggled to survive using the old ways of living that had been passed on from generations and that no longer seemed to work in the modernized world. This paper argues that, although the need for change of the old habits was at the basis of the mass exodus to the New World, migration facilitated the emergence of modernity in Norway. America letters played an important role, as they both convinced the families and friends of the emigrants to embark for America, but they also helped increase the literacy rate in the homeland. Further on, the discussion will focus on the American experience of Knut Hamsun and Sigbjørn Obstfelder, which helped them gain recognition as forerunners of modernism in Norway

Interpreting America in the Works of Knut Hamsun and Johannes V. Jensen

The USA had an significant influence on the Nobel Prize-Winning authors Johannes V. Jensen and Knut Hamsun. Both authors spent significant amounts of time in America and subsequently expressed their thoughts and opinions on the country in the form of books and articles. Their diverging views on the topics of technological advancements and America’s future role in the world, serve to capture a small but significant part of the larger debate on America’s role in the Nordic countries in the early 20th century

Hamsun’s “mal du siècle”

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&#x0D; disposition.

Vilken svensk författare motsvarar Knut Hamsun och Örnulf Tigerstedt?

”Vilken svensk författare motsvarar Japans Yukio Mishima, Tysklands Ernst Jünger och Frankrikes Louis-Ferdinand Céline?”, frågar en svensk debattör och forskare i en artikel 2016. Till dessa om än famösa så välkända namn adderar frågeställaren Norges Knut Hamsun respektive Finlands Örnulf Tigerstedt. Med denna fråga som utgångspunkt granskas och prövas i artikeln såväl nazistiska partiledare och nazistanhängare som svenska nationalpoeter. Vilka diktare är att betrakta som nazistiska och vilka har associerats med nazismen på felaktiga grunder? Och var alla nazistiska diktare män? I nutid med yttringar av vad som betecknats som ultranationalism och populism i ytterlighetsrörelser, till sin spets dragna i form av nynazism, är det viktigare än någonsin att göra upp med det nazistiska förflutna och utreda hur nazismen gestaltades i den nazistiska kampdikten, såväl i den svenska som i den nordiska.

Adapting to Urban Pro-Sociality in Hamsun’s Hunger

AbstractThe rural-migrant protagonist in Knut Hamsun’s Hunger (1890; Sult) fails to adapt to the urban environment because the moral algorithm that informs his collaborative choices is unfit for the city. He often responds poorly when overwhelmed by pride, shame, or other sensations that he struggles to make sense of. Such emotions are hypothesized to be neuro­computational adaptations crafted by natural selection to help us get ahead as collabora­tors. But with societal transformation, these feelings can become a poor match for a new reality. Reprogramming oneself can be challenging; Hunger’s protagonist must suffer months of emotional and physical pain before he adapts. His journey, and Hamsun’s mod­ernist project, can be illuminated by recent research on status management and morality as cooperation. As literature, Hunger could fulfill several adaptive functions by mapping mor­als for urban pro-sociality at a time of great disruption. Similar moral adaptation could become necessary in our present era, too.

Eros in the Hamsunian Male Figure

Using a psychoanalytic perspective, I explore Knut Hamsun’s novels, Sult (1890), Mysterier (1892), Pan (1894), and Victoria (1898) and focus on the power that the women in fantasy have over the different male protagonists, whom I term the Hamsunian male. Within each fantasy, the women either dominate or exert supernatural power over the Hamsunian male. By undertaking such an investigation, I examine how the desired women in fantasy differ from the main female characters, in so far as they portray the Hamsunian male’s desire that ranges from intense eroticism to fear and death. While my focus on the female characters in the Hamsunian male differs from the discussions concerning the main female characters, I note that such women comment on the depiction of the masculine gender in Hamsun’s work. Furthermore, the discussion shows the power of women in fantasy, thus questioning whether they should continue to be disregarded as only superficially feminine.

“Speak your word and break!”

Abstract By tracing an alternative aesthetics of decomposition and fragmentation, this article offers a new understanding of the literary and poetological strategies Knut Hamsun uses to create a disintegrating text cosmos wherein the idea of ‘creation out of nothing’ (creatio ex nihilo) is one key to artistic originality. The article explores the interdependence of different notions of decline and shows that the image of the (biblical) fall is particularly important to the poetics and aesthetic structure of Hamsun’s Hunger (Sult, 1890). Around 1900, ideas of wholeness crumble, a decomposition which is reflected in the well-established philosophical and anthropological experiments of Nietzsche, Bourget and Simmel. Taking some of their aesthetic assumptions as a point of departure, the present paper argues that Hamsun’s novel offers an aesthetic variation on the decline of unity-based concepts, ranging from the subject to religious belief as well as to traditional storytelling.

Hamsun i sør og Hamsun i nord. Kunsten å argumentere for et diktersenter

In 2005, two ambitious local initiatives were launched that independently of each other argued for establishing a national centre in their particular community to commemorate Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun (1859–1952): one in Grimstad on the southern coast of Norway, and the other at Hamarøy in northern Norway. Both places boasted a special ownership to the world famous author, but only the northern initiative materialized and a new museum opened in time for Hamsun’s 150 year anniversary. Why did Grimstad’s project fail and Hamarøy’s succeed? How did The Knut Hamsun Centre in Hamarøy follow up their stated goals and ambitions when planning the exhibitions? And how did Grimstad motivate plans for a downscaled centre several years later? A major issue in the article as well as in the discussion of the projects, is how the initiators argue for celebrating an author who supported Hitler and the Nazis during the war. Rhetorical and textual analysis of four documents offer insight into deliberations of how to exhibit a problematic legacy.