Knut Hamsun's novels Pan and Victoria focus on the tragedies of the attainment of love and then its subsequent loss due to the pressures of social conventions and responsibilities. In Pan, the male protagonist, Thomas Glahn, meets Edvarda, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and attempts to consummate his love for her. Due to an inability to engage in social interactions as he feels more akin to nature, Glahn cannot properly continue his relationship with Edvarda. In Victoria, Hamsun writes of Johannes Møller, the son of a miller, who falls in love with the daughter of a landowner, Victoria, who returns his love, but cannot show him her love due to her familial responsibilities. While many scholars focus on Glahn's and Johannes's respective troubled relationships with mortal women, they discuss Iselin, a nature spirit, only in respect to Glahn's relationship with nature and his ideal of a feminine woman.In Pan, Hamsun initially introduces Iselin as an amorous nature spirit, a legend that comes alive when the protagonist enters the northern forest. In Even Arntzen's article, “Munken Vendt—på sporet av Knut Hamsuns mytiske estetikk,” he considers the characters fantasy figures that arise from Glahns's mind (Arntzen 1996). Once again, in Victoria, Iselin appears as a character from one of Johannes's fictional writings. Johannes creates Munken Vendt as his poetic voice, and through the narration of Munken Vendt, a reader finds Iselin (Arntzen 1996). While I do not discuss Iselin in greater detail in Hamsun's later drama Munken Vendt, I will mention that Hamsun develops her ethereal character into a mortal woman who also loves Munken Vendt, yet does not overcome his initial rejection of her. Though I do not discuss the difference of interpretations in context of the play, I broach this difference from the perspective of Iselin to refer to Hamsun's formulation of Iselin's character. For some readers, Iselin remains mythical, and symbolic of a mythical female figure of creation, a point that supports my view of Iselin as the origin of sublimated desire. In this article, I use Jacques Lacan's ideas on sublimation to describe four different aspects of how Iselin evokes libidinal desire from the male characters. The first part entails Glahn's encounter with Iselin as a nature deity in Pan, as an understanding of her as a beautiful yet disarming creature. Then I show how Iselin's beauty inspires the male characters to take on some of her characteristics, and finally how the male characters channel Iselin's creativity through storytelling and writing. In my discussion of the first few steps, I discuss Iselin as she appears in Pan, and then I discuss Iselin in Victoria and Pan in the latter steps.Though her role is less significant in Victoria than in Pan, Iselin alludes to mystical creativity, a manifestation of feminine energy expressed through male fantasy. When Iselin evokes libidinal impulses within the male protagonists, they experience sexual feelings for the nature spirit but sublimate this energy in order to create art through stories. Through an investigation of Jacques Lacan's ideas of sublimation, I consider the relationship that Hamsun's male characters have with Iselin as a nature deity and object of desire that inspires an increase in writing instead of a desire to eradicate the impulse. In my examination, I demonstrate Iselin's presence as paramount to the novels’ expression of love and desire. My discussion of both novels reveals a progression of how Iselin is idolized, mainly through the events in Pan, and then sublimated, as seen in both Pan and Victoria.Hamsun's emphasis on nature is not a new insight, and many scholars continue to address it in their work. In Monika Žagar's book The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance (2009), she aptly explains the Norwegian cultural background during the nineteenth century as involving a conflict between modernism as seen in the crowded urban cities, use of newer forms of technological advancements, and the Norwegian focus on nature as the primitive ideal. As part of the earlier preoccupation with finding a Norwegian identity after their independence from Denmark, Žagar describes Norwegians as focused on constructing identities of cultivated people with access to their primitive side. Norway became known as a site of natural rebirth for artists, who used their natural environment to distinguish their voices from others and captivate their readers (Žagar 2009). Offering a similar perspective, Arne Lunde explicates that Hamsun's male figures—most relevant in this case, Johannes and Glahn—symbolize the struggle between nature and modernization. Such “soulful wander-artists” illustrate the way that Hamsun clashes with conventional reality. Their fantasies depicted in writing and thoughts are reactions against modern ideals such as democracy, urbanization, and conformity (Lunde 2008).When discussing Pan as part of the fin-de-siècle literature that exposes ennui as opposed to aesthetics for artistic restless behavior, Pål Bjørby (1993) describes Hamsun's novel as a return to nature. Aptly connecting the pattern between women and nature, Bjørby states: “Hamsun describes exhaustion, anxiety, and nervousness in a destabilized bourgeois male self, who is uncertain about how to live in a modern world and whose effort to salvage the self requires a return to nature. . . . The restoring of the self includes . . . a return to uncluttered desire, sex, and Woman” (1993, 127). An underlying connection in Bjørby's observations of nature, art, and male desire for women is one of identity and the way that the self involves an association between nature, desire for women, and art.The focus on nature relates to Frode Lerum Boasson's assertion of the vitalistic impulse that Hamsun's male characters honor, as seen in particular in their return to nature after having failed at social interactions. Hamsun's expression of man's natural impulse refers to his goal in literature to uncover the “mimosa sensibilities,” or the acute sensitivities that the mimosa plant experiences upon touch (Boasson 2016). Moreover, Hamsun's use of the Greek mythological figure Pan in the eponymous work Pan demonstrates his belief that modern technology displaces art and natural life (Boasson 2015). Boasson further explains that Pan symbolically addresses the notion of vitalism, or the attempt to return to life after its decay. When he mentions that Hamsun tries to bring back life after its decay in modernism, he describes vitalism as an unconscious force throughout nature that only certain humans can access (Boasson 2016). As I consider one of his explanations of the mimosa impulse as a depiction of the vitalistic force, I consider my discussion of the libidinal impulse as exemplary of a type of vitalism—one that enables the male characters to create stories.In his lecture series on Ethics in Psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan initially contributes to Freud's notion of sublimation, which Freud defines as “a process that concerns object-libido and consists in the instinct's directing itself towards an aim other than, and remote from, that of sexual satisfaction” (1989, 598). Although other accounts of Freudian sublimation reveal it to be some form of repression, substitute desexualized symptoms, and a defense against repression (Gemes 2009), the important defining factor of sublimation is its connection to repression. Despite a lack of complete clarity on the origin of sublimation and its relation to repression, early conceptions incorporate a turning away of the object-libido into the self.1 Providing a different view of sublimation, Lacan states that satiation of desire involves a reading of desire as a chain of metaphors and metonyms. He further comments that “the properly metonymic relations between one signifier and another that we call desire is not a new object or a previous object, but the change of object in itself” (Lacan 1986, 293). Lacan incorporates Freud's further development of sublimation as a desexualized energy that makes the subject abandon feelings for the object and internalize it as part of the ego (Freud 1960), when Lacan formulates the example of courtly love.By examining the function of courtly love poetry, Lacan illustrates that humans want an object that is idealized to the point of not being real. When the poet reframes the woman as a symbol and metaphorically refers to the symbol itself in lieu of the woman, he explicitly alludes to her in a sexual way. By doing so, the poet constructs the object of desire as unattainable and as necessitating multiple barriers in order to increase the feeling of desire. Even in terms of her aspects, she is glorified beyond human measure, thus stripping her of her human abilities. Essentially, the subject falls for the impossible or the unreal, the void that Lacan refers to as “the vacuole” (1986, 148–50). This concept touches upon the process in sublimation in which the subject aggrandizes an object to the level of The Thing—a “beyond of the sacred” element (Lacan 1986, 140), possibly alluding to a sublime essence to which one attributes powers of a deity. Human beings have desired objects based on their associations with Das Ding (The Thing), but they do not have access to the Thing-in-itself. When Lacan discusses Das Ding as a primordial object that originates desire, he posits that it is comprised of different parts that signify different meanings in addition to being an object “refound” and never truly lost. The vase is a dualistic object that creates a void only to fill it, and represents the notion of Das Ding, a void that one fills yet also that which creates the same object to be filled (Lacan 1986). Both descriptions of the vase exemplify the idealization of Iselin as a mythological creature, as the origin of an ideal for other women yet also that which the male protagonists use to judge the other women, thus creating a void in their response to these other women.When Hamsun first mentions Iselin in Pan, he does so through Glahn's solace of solitude and the forest, thus associating Iselin with a mythological forest spirit. The time is 1 a.m. in full spring when birds are alive and the sun descends for a short while before rising once more. For readers unfamiliar with the midnight sun, during the summer, the sun descends below the horizon and then quickly rises above it. Hamsun imbues Iselin with nature in the repeated line that acts as a simultaneous description of the early morning sun descending into the sea: “Men solen dukker skiven ned i havet og kommer så op igjen, rød, fornyet, som om den har været nede og drukket” (Hamsun 1968, 18) [“But the sun dips its disk into the sea and then rises again, red, renewed, as if it has been down to drink” (Hamsun 1998, 20)]. This same line occurs an hour after Glahn has consummated his love with Iselin. His experience with her shows playful restraint on her part, as depicted after their hour together when “hun mot min mund” (Hamsun 1968, 18) [“she speaks, close to my (Glahn's) mouth” (Hamsun 1998, 20)]. Through Glahn's experience with her, readers perceive Iselin as a nature spirit, a manifestation of love for the forest. Iselin's breath is more like “en iling [at] går gjennom skogen” (Hamsun 1968, 47) [“a shudder (that) sweeps through the forest” (Hamsun 1998, 61)]. Glahn notes Iselin's presence “pusler i græsset” (Hamsun 1968, 47) [“rustling in the grass” (Hamsun 1998, 71)] as if they could be “løv som faldt til jorden . . . også være trin” (Hamsun 1968, 47) [“leaves falling to the ground . . . (could) also be footsteps” (Hamsun 1998, 61)]. Then Glahn fantasizes about Iselin as a manifestation of different ethereal beings that takes a human form: a prayer to different hunters and a nature spirit from the woods from four generations ago. Her voice is akin to “syvstjærnen synger gjennem mit blod” (Hamsun 1968, 48) [“the Pleiades singing in his blood” (Hamsun 1998, 62)], a quality that aligns with heavenly features. After the encounter, Hamsun describes Iselin as having a face tender and rapturous as she waves good-bye to Glahn. Affirming Hamsun's sensuous description of Iselin, Buttry refers to her as an “embodiment of eros” (2009a, 223). Arntzen (1996) attributes Glahn's accessibility to Iselin's presence to the legend from where she originated. Inherent in Arntzen's description of Iselin as a legend, Iselin's character as a higher essence supports my discussion of her as a higher deity.By giving Iselin attributes of the beautiful yet mysterious nature spirit, Hamsun imbues Iselin with a beauty that simultaneously lures lovers but also ironically drives them away. Insofar as Iselin has different lovers, she visits them at different occasions, thus alluding to periods of time without satisfaction. In relation to Lacanian desire, the point of desire is not to satiate it, but to maintain the feeling of desire and change not only the men who desire but the men's relation to Iselin. Lacan expresses the function of the Beautiful in relation to desire. Artists experience dissatisfaction as they capture the Beautiful, since in doing so, they confront the idea that the Beautiful disarms desire, thus separating them from the Beautiful. When Lacan defines the Beautiful as “suspending, lowering, disarming desire” (1986, 238), yet eliciting a form of desire that arises in a rupture between pain and pleasure, he affirms that the quest for a beautiful object, be it a person or an ideal, incorporates conflicted feelings. Lacan mentions that the subject vanishes and alienates himself through the process of expressing desire to an object. The subject becomes a series of signifiers by appealing to the object as need (2006, 58). Furthermore, Lacan mentions that the idealized woman is a mirrored image of the artist's quest to seek her (1998). The artist matches the traits of the object of desire to his ideal; since it involves some of the artist's identity, it alludes to a narcissist function. If the woman has ideal aspects inherent in the social norms one comes from, she is a projected view of the subject's ego ideal, thus mirroring the intrapersonal split Freud suggests within the ego and id.In Lacan's essay, “Field and Function of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,” he explains how desire causes the object to disappear and reappear in the guise of what the subject's alter ego, or ego ideal, wishes it to be. Though Lacan addresses the “fort/da game” that Freud's grandson played, he means to offer this anecdote as an explanation for what occurs when the subject uses words from his language to locate and name an object of desire. As in the Freudian anecdote of the boy's game of using a wooden spool on a string to symbolize the disappearance and reappearance of his caretaker, the subject also enters a similar field of signifiers when making sense of the object of desire (Lacan 2006, 319). The difference between desire and need also obscures the way by which the subject understands his desire (Lacan 2006). The identity of the object diminishes as the subject makes sense of her through his pursuit of desire. The quest for the Beautiful also relates to the role of the artist or poet insofar as they lure their audience to experience multiple emotions by using different signifiers. Some examples of such signifiers include objects such as parasols, hats, hands, shoes, and eyes as partial objects, or objects that Stefanie von Schnurbein refers to as fetishistic objects (2011). While such signifiers refer to Glahn's focus on mortal women, he starts noting their distinctive features as a reaction to his experience of desire from Iselin. The partial objects, in this case, different aspects of the female characters, refer to the function of Das Ding. Aspects such as Iselin's voice, shoes, animalistic gaze, and amorous nature make Glahn idealize her as a humanlike embodiment of nature's fecundity in summer. Yet his fixation of Iselin's erotic nature allows him to incorporate Iselin's actions into his personality, such as her ability to have different lovers.As Iselin herself becomes synonymous with having multiple lovers, in this respect, collecting different lovers, it inspires Glahn to make the necessary sacrifices that might incur more desire. When Glahn leaves a party because he hears nature, such as the sound of birds, he leaves at 1 a.m., showing how the different sounds of nature and time are signifiers for Iselin. When Glahn chooses nature over Edvarda, he actuates similar actions to those that Iselin performs, foregoing one lover for another.2 Furthermore, Glahn shows this duplicity when he addresses his different loves to Eva, one of his lovers. During his “iron nights,” a time in late summer when frost during the night's cool temperature kills the summer's blooms, Glahn spends three nights in the forest, marking a narrative shift in the story. In his immersion with the forest, he comes to the realization of his identity and connection with nature. In his iron nights in the forest, Glahn discovers his main conflict and the purpose of his subjectivity: “Jeg elsker en kjærlighetsdrøm jeg hadde engang, jeg elsker dig og jeg elsker denne plet jord” (Hamsun 1968, 63) [“I love a dream of love I once had, I love you, and I love this patch of earth” (Hamsun 1998, 83)]. The Norwegian word “kjærlighetsdrøm” depicts a dream as a love dream, as opposed to a general dream, thus referring to Glahn's dream of love for Iselin, and by extension, the forest. In return, Glahn channels his love for Iselin into his storytelling. Since Glahn addresses Eva, he notes that he does love her, but he loves the intensity that she shows him, rather than the person she is. This intensity Eva bestows upon him is similar to the devotion he shows to Iselin, and by extension, to nature.Like Iselin, Glahn is also described as having intense eyes. Initially describing Iselin as giving him a sign of her infatuation for Glahn, he indicates: “Hun vil gi mig et vink med øinene å forstå efter” (Hamsun 1968, 18) [“She will give me a sign with her eyes to make me understand” (Hamsun 1998, 20)]. In her own narrative about her Scottish lover, Dundas, Iselin admits that when she looks at herself in the mirror after her encounter, she remarks: “Min Gud, jeg hadde aldrig set på mig selv med de øine før” (Hamsun 1968, 50) [“Good God, I never looked at myself with those eyes before” (Hamsun 1998, 64)]. Noting the aggressive nature Iselin has, especially in context to her amorous behavior and multiple partners, Hamsun attributes a libidinal energy to Iselin, like that which compels Glahn but also inspires him to act in a similar manner. Glahn mirrors Iselin's powerful form of communication with her eyes. Edvarda mentions to Glahn that her friend has remarked on his intense animal eyes. Within his own psyche, Glahn also measures admiration from Edvarda, Iselin, and other women, and measures their love for him by the intensity of their gaze when they look at him. In the Norwegian text, the look is described more as a glance, putting the emphasis on the way of looking as opposed to the eyes themselves. This focus on the glance coincides with Iselin's glance at herself in the mirror when she first notices the intensity in her eyes.In reference to Victoria, Hamsun correlates Johannes's identity to Iselin in a more subtle way. During the more natural interactions between Johannes and Victoria, Hamsun writes of both characters picking flowers or walking in the forest. In addition to the aforementioned example at the start of the story, Hamsun writes about how Johannes wanders around the side of the lake, the thicket, and the quarry to pick flowers, and Victoria intentionally meets him there to invite him to the Castle party. Other instances include two narratives based on Johannes and Victoria's interactions in the thickets. In another instance, Victoria pleads to Johannes that he is the man she loves, and she indicates that she “nu holder jeg meg heller litt inne i skogen ved siden av veien; for der gikk også han helst” (Hamsun 1964, 70) [“keep(s) to (the) woods because that is where he (Johannes) prefers to walk” (Hamsun 2005, 62)].Similar to his depiction of Glahn in Pan, Hamsun situates Johannes as belonging to the forest, a position that places Victoria as the hunter. While these examples do not directly allude to Iselin, a reader perceives the correlation of Johannes as Iselin when considering the similarities in the pastoral setting that intensifies the feelings of admiration from the hunter. In this case, Johannes differs from Glahn since Glahn positions himself as a hunter who goes out into nature to contact the nature spirit, while Johannes does so in order to surround himself with an inspiring environment to help him with his writing. In this case, Victoria is the hunter who seeks the creative force, Johannes, in nature. While Hamsun differs in his depiction of how his male characters mirror Iselin, the difference still infers her significance. In Pan, Hamsun makes his male character immerse himself in the forest to access Iselin, while in Victoria, he places Johannes in the forest in order to create thoughts where he can use his artistic voice, Munken Vendt, to further create Iselin's love story with Diderik, one of her lovers.The identity of the artist arises in the form of fantasy and writing that occurs when the men start associating their creative behavior—whether through storytelling in Glahn's case or writing in Johannes's case—with their fixation on Iselin. The act of writing becomes the new ideal to which the male characters relinquish their satisfaction. Lacan asserts that sublimation—in the form of art or courtly poetry—diverts libidinal energy to create a new object, superimposing the form of desire itself (Lacan 1986). While Iselin remains in the background, a new vignette arises as a means to satisfy the characters. Lacanian scholar Joan Copjec asserts that the libidinal drive seeks different objects, as it has no goal, just an aim, and the object itself elicits satisfaction without direct allusion to the higher ideal (2004). Copjec explains Lacan's formulation as the drive choosing an object simply for the fact that it satisfies, as sublimation changes the nature of the object itself. When Lacan discusses the anecdote about Prevert's matchbook collection, he asserts that the act of collecting supersedes the idea of the matchbox itself. To clarify, the act of collecting becomes a satisfying act, and the matchbox an empty tool for such desire (Lacan 1986).In order to deal with the sudden loss of Eva, the person who shows devotion to him in the way he showed Iselin, Glahn creates an elaborate fantasy that shows the devotion in the act of desiring without necessitating the reciprocation of love. To put it briefly, the narrative shifts into first person, Glahn's personal writing, and depicts a maiden locked in a stone tower away from a lord to whom she willingly gave. In return, the lord gave himself to another woman who cared less about his willingness to give, an aspect that intensified the lord's motivations to give more. The woman in the stone tower gives herself to the lord in different ways as the years progress; some include sewing his name on his table linen, saving plaster from the stone walls to put in a jar as a remembrance of her imprisonment in his honor, and thinking of him despite the fact that he does not love her. The fantasy depicts unrequited love but shows the endurance of the person suffering. The aim is to show suffering and to allude to Eva's sacrifice because she gives her devotion to Glahn despite the fact that he prefers Iselin. Hamsun shows that Glahn's identity as a storyteller depicts a merging of identities of the artist with his artistic ideal, Iselin. In other words, his desire for storytelling arises from the perceived traits he sees in Iselin, his artistic ideal, especially after she tells him her stories of her lovers. The collision of the two identities through the act of storytelling positions the libidinal impulse as the crucial signifier that distinguishes it from other signifiers. Not only does Glahn position himself as Iselin, but he also takes the role of the author depicting the original scene when Glahn first desires Iselin.In Victoria, Hamsun mentions her in a line when correlating Johannes's heartbreak over Victoria's betrayal with his travels abroad. Through his poetic voice as Munken Vendt, Johannes indicates that Diderik is emphasized as someone whom “Gud slo med klærlighet” (Hamsun 1964, 44) [“God smote with love” (Hamsun 2005, 38)]. Since Diderik is mentioned in relation to Iselin, a parallel to Johannes's reaction to Victoria, one can only assume that the one Diderik loves is Iselin. Near the end of the novel, before Johannes tells Camilla, Johannes's potential love interest, to go with Richmond, Camilla's future love interest, he describes to her his fairy-tale end as consisting of an hour of love. Titling it “Slekten (The Genus) or The Spirit of Life,” Johannes exuberantly tells Camilla that every creature in the forest has an hour of love. He mentions that this fantasy has finally been written down, as he has experienced the vision once more. He states: “En bølge av henrykkelse er ivente, øynene blir ildfullere, barmene ånder. Så stiger en fin rødme opp fra jorden; det er unnselighetens rødme fra alle de nakne hjerter, og natten farves rosenrød” (Hamsun 1964, 76) [“A wave of rapture awaits them, their eyes grow more ardent, their breath quickens. Then a delicate blush rises from the earth, a blush of bashfulness from all those naked hearts, and the night takes on a rose-red hue” (Hamsun 2005, 69)].Johannes's obsession with writing diminishes his sense of reality, as he depicts scenes from “Slekten/The Genus/The Spirit of Life.” In the Norwegian text, the title refers to “The Genus,” meaning the second to the last name in the biological classification system. Typically, the genus is the common name for a living creature, a group in the biological classification system that is stated before the name of species. By writing Johannes's story as “The Genus,” Hamsun intends to unify all the living creatures. Considering that Johannes discusses the hour of creation when all appears red, the term “genus” refers to part of the identity of living beings. The focus is on the method of creation, similar to the hour of love mentioned in Glahn's hour with Iselin in Pan. Not only has he written his identity and desire into the story, but Johannes also depicts how the goal of desire is to maintain the feeling of attraction, as seen in the form of a representation of love deeply felt between two characters but held apart by stubbornness. The imagery here parallels the first scene with Iselin in Pan, where the sun rises from the sea at 1 a.m. The delicate blush and rose-red hue mirrors the color of the sky when Glahn has his hour with Iselin. In both Pan and Victoria, Iselin functions as a synecdoche for all forest creatures, her eyes growing more rapturous and ardent. It seems to refer to the rapture that Glahn experiences in the forest when the forest comes alive. Johannes, unlike Glahn, uses his fantasies to successfully turn his feelings of loss into stories.After Victoria's fiancé dies, Johannes writes shorter fairy tales. One is about two mothers, one with two dark-haired daughters who love the same man. Depicting a love triangle in which the older sister loves the man who in return loves the younger sister, Johannes inserts himself as the man who pleads to the younger sister, who reluctantly refuses him (Hamsun 2005). While one might debate that Johannes writes the younger sister as Victoria, the small vignette occurs prior to Camilla's visit to Johannes when she tells him that she spent the entire time dancing with Richmond. When taking into consideration that Victoria sets up Johannes with Camilla just as the older sister advised the man to speak to the younger sister, one perceives that Johannes inserts Camilla's character as the younger sister into his story. Johannes becomes wholly engrossed in his writing, forgoing a reaction against Camilla's evident feelings for Richmond. For Johannes, the idea of life and spring, the libidinal investment in Iselin, shows an elaboration of the devotion bestowed upon Victoria through Johannes's writing. Depicting love as originally coming to earth on a spring night when a young man sees two eyes and kisses two lips, and describing it as “en sol som lynte mot en stjerne” (Hamsun 1964, 24) [“a sun flashing at a star” (Hamsun 2005, 18)], Johannes describes a love that arises from the beginning of time, thus harkening back to the Iselin of four generations earlier.As seen in Boasson's description of vitalism as an impulsive bond to nature, Hamsun writes about Glahn as becoming part of nature and trying to find life after social conventions destroy nature. According to Boasson (2016), the close association between literature and nature suggests Hamsun's vitalistic goal of allowing nature to speak to one's senses. Hamsun uses the character, Iselin, as a way to show the natural impulses or the unconscious factors that humans are only sensitive to if they are close to nature (Boasson 2016). Hamsun may be enacting the paradoxical quality of desire as that which attracts and repulses him, when he writes of the way that Johannes saves Victoria in his writing despite his inability to save her at the end. Johannes focuses more on the symbolic nature that Iselin, as a symbol of life, might incur on his art by infusing his own fantasies and writing with references to light and life. In this way, Johannes differs from Glahn insofar as his object of desire is Victoria, and Iselin only functions as a creative expression. Johannes uses his poetic voice as Munken Vendt to describe Iselin as a nature creature and