A WALKER PLAYS WITH A MUTE

"There will certainly be a lot of berries this year. Cranberries, lingonberries and cloudberries. Not for that, you can't live off berries. But it's nice that they're there in the field and are pleasing to the eye. And many times they're also refreshing to find when you're thirsty and hungry. I was thinking about this last night."

1909

A Wanderer Plays with a Mute (1909) is the second volume in the Wanderer trilogy.

Six years have passed since the events recounted in Under høststjernen , and Knut Pedersen is back at the captain's farm Øvrebø. A general decay has become apparent among both buildings and people, and the Falkenberg couple are mutually unfaithful. Knut Pedersen tries to remedy the passivity and decay by initiating several projects on and around the farm, but to no avail. It all culminates in Lovise Falkenberg, who is now pregnant with her lover, drowning. In addition to containing lyrical and melancholic sections, the novel is characterized by sharp attacks on the spirit of the times.

A Wanderer Playing with a Mute begins the socially critical and polemical part of Hamsun's writings.

"... there must be a certain degree of smallness in the ability to go and be permanently satisfied with life and, in addition, expect something new and good from it."

"Age bestows no maturity, age bestows nothing but old age."

"There is no doubt that it takes a certain degree of brain emptiness to be able to go on and be permanently satisfied with oneself and everything."

"When I thank God for life, it is not because of greater maturity that has come with age, but because I have always enjoyed living."