ATLE SKAFTUN: HAMSUNS FLEA THEATER REVISITED

In 1917, Henrik Pontoppidan wrote an article about the relationship between Danish literature and the literature from neighboring countries Norway and Sweden.

In conclusion, he regrets, among other things, that

... our tone-setting criticism, which takes a snøvle tone on, when it comes to Danish productions, turns itself into an expletive and drummer for Hamsun's world-famous Fleppetheater.1

Pontoppidan sent the article to his Norwegian poet colleague Kinck, who replied:

Flea theater about Hamsun - god, how well said! It makes me chuckle every time I remember it. And I don't think so, it only happens out of envy, because his book has sold 10,000 and mine probably not 1000.2

Pontoppidan's characterization of Hamsun's writings has stuck, as is often the case with linguistic flukes of this type. And it is truly an apt and rich characterization, which can make sense from many points of view; from the immediate clucking of Kinck to the somewhat tighter mask of those who read contempt for humanity into the uneven relationship between the theater director and the powerless artists in the novels, and see ideological manipulation as characteristic of the relationship between the director and the audience. At first glance, these critical perspectives appear as clarifications or more elaborate versions of the flea theater picture, where the logic of the picture is made more explicit. The big mistake with such approaches in my eyes is that one forgets the Hamsunian laughter, and adopts a gravely serious reading style that does not suit Hamsun's occasionally morbid humor, and that translates all observations into ideological signs and symptoms. Pontoppidan's characterization is a parody that contains both a fairly loyal description of Hamsun's fictional universe and a distortion of it. The laughter springs from precisely this tension. However, it is the distortion alone that has remained the meaning of the flea theater metaphor.

When I say that the parody of Hamsun is loyal, it is because it captures Hamsun's striking way of relating to his own fictional characters and their fictional worlds. Hamsun often compares characters to ants and the environment around them to an anthill. Such characteristics are likely to be directly linked to the flea market image; relating to the fictional universe that is completely clear means that the author expressly indicates that he himself believes he has this complete overview. In extension of this, it is reasonable to talk about Hamsun's bird's eye view and Hamsun's reduction of human struggle on earth to something very small and petty in relation to ideas about meaning and human dignity, especially in the novels after the turn of the century.

The question, however, is what kind of authority we should attribute to statements of this type: Is this really where we find the true message or intention of the novels? My answer to that question is no. The reason for this is that throughout his entire writing career, Hamsun stages his own statement position in relation to the fictional universe, his position as author.3 He actively relates to people, events and environment, and writes this relationship into his novels as an essential part of his novels. The people may be small, and occasionally they are subjected to more or less reasonable subjective outcomes from the author. But the author's observations, comments and speculations are situated on the same level as all this. It is very characteristic of Hamsun that he moves – smoothly and imperceptibly – from a claim formulated from an assumed sovereign position outside and above it all, to disappearing into details that rarely substantiate the claim's grand words, and which rather contribute to the impression that the story is driven forward by precisely the author's associations rooted in people and environment. If we say that Hamsun diminishes human life in his novels, we must not forget that it is precisely this low and small that he inflates and makes worth telling. In other words: If we focus on Hamsun's bird's eye view, we must not forget or overlook the frog's eye view. And if we want to discuss the message and ideology in his novels, we must properly address the question of authority: What kind of status does the authorial voice have in Hamsun? Are there authoritative intentions in Hamsun's novels? If so, what kind of authoritative intentions do we find?

I have already begun to answer the first question . In my opinion, an essential characteristic of Hamsun's narrative style is that the author's voice is situated in the borderland between the world of fiction and the author's world outside. Hamsun relates actively and subjectively to his own fictional characters, events and environments as if he were observing them there and then. The novel text thus becomes a discursive field in which the author's voice enters into active dialogue with fictional characters. By situating the voice so closely, the bird's eye view is undermined and counteracted, since comments and speculations are based on observations of detailed phenomena, not on the complete overview. The bird's eye view and the frog's eye view contradict – or comment on – each other, and also imply a dialogue between different author positions: the outside, holistic author who is responsible for the work as a whole, and the situated, participating author who makes judgments without regard to the work as a coherent whole. The author is in this way in dialogue with his characters, and at the same time in dialogue with himself.

The same dialogical relationship between observer and observed is evident from the depiction of the conscious life of the hero of Hunger via the social sources up to the most clearly autobiographical anchoring of the observation and speculation center in On Overgrown Paths (1949). Observation and speculation are the central processes in this method of working; or in Hamsun's own words:

I base my personal impression and intuition, both of them. I base my work on episodes, facts, and whatever psychological sense I may possess.

The movement from a sovereign and confident insight into the whole to the dissolution of the unified picture is also characteristic. "It is not as easy to judge in the life of the neighboring town as I first thought, the clear, straightforward lines are missing", it is said in "The Neighboring Town"4, a text that gives us many keys to what I have called Hamsun's dialogical realism: Hamsun relates to speaking characters and the discursive community they are part of, and the texts can be read with great benefit precisely as permeated by relations between voices – between the voices of the fictional characters understood as ideological positions: No matter how small and everyday values ​​and perspectives are involved, it is none the less these breaks between voices and values ​​that Hamsun interferes with when he positions himself in dialogue with the characters on their level.5

"The Neighborhood" is an exemplary demonstration of this poetic method, but far from the only one. On Overgrown Paths and the sketch "A Fairly Ordinary Fly of Medium Size"6 demonstrate the method with all the desired clarity, the latter in addition in relation to the insect world. Hunger (1890) has the same structure, even if the perspective on the surroundings is extremely subjective. In Children of Time (1913) we find an exemplary frame narrative, where the narrator close to the author, or the author, situates himself as a source researcher in the environment the novel describes. This frame narrative is easy to overlook, but once you have seen it, it is also easier to recognize the relationship between author and hero in the other novels with a third-person narrator.

To the extent that there is a message or a clear overarching intention in Hamsun's work, I would say that it must be read out of the dialogical tension between authoritarian statements and approaches to explanatory plots on the macro level and the subjective author's observations and speculations on the micro level. The truth of the work is then that the truth is not formulated in big words alone. On the macro level, Hamsun laments the decline and loss of human greatness and adventure, on the micro level he creates fascinating mysteries and riddles based on the small and low and everyday. As a thinker he is attracted by large dimensions and the lofty, as a poet he relates to the undergrowth, the low-growing, insects, small details and everyday toil. "Flea theater" is an apt characteristic of Hamsun's fictional universe, as long as we do not forget that it is actually possible to become involved in what happens on such a tiny stage.7

Notes:

1. Source.
2. Source , see note e).
3. The concept of author refers to the originator of the utterance, i.e. the one who says the words we hear or read. Mikhail Bakhtin uses this concept of the utterance authority in novels as long as it is not a fictionalized narrator who speaks. This opens up a reasonable handling of the relationship between author and work, in my opinion.
4. In Articles 1889–1928 , edited by Francis Bull.
5. Cf. Atle Skaftun 2003: Knut Hamsun's dialogical realism , and Atle Skaftun 2006: "'Shadows of time': Time representation and dialogical openness in Hamsun's prose".
6. In Siesta (1897).
7. Hamsun's dialogical method is exemplarily and enjoyablely demonstrated in the small sketch from the author's desk entitled "A fairly ordinary fly of medium size". Cf. Skaftun 2006.

Atle Skaftun is an associate professor at the Department of Cultural and Linguistics at the University of Stavanger.