JOHN BRUNMO: HAMSUN AND THE MODERN
How is it that Hamsun, who marketed himself as a "modern author" through depictions of modern division and the sensitive human mind in the 1890s, ended up becoming a critic of everything modern, from democracy to lipstick?
The historical background is obvious that during Hamsun's lifetime, from 1859 to 1952, Norwegian society underwent a profound modernization process. The writing also testifies to the major economic, social and political changes that Hamsun witnessed and participated in: the development of a more fluid money economy, greater opportunities for social mobility and the establishment of a functioning democracy. These were just some of the major processes that Hamsun used and took a position on in his writing. From his own memories of life as a shepherd boy in an agricultural society to his bitter portrayal of democracy and commercialization, it is obviously a long leap. But there is also an inner connection in these experiences that forms a line in Hamsun's texts. Keywords such as subjectivation, democratization and market economy constitute the main points of the social development that Hamsun was in the midst of. This meant that Hamsun was concerned with the modern throughout his diverse writing.
Even before Hamsun launched himself as a “modern author” in “From the Unconscious Soul”, he made himself an interpreter of modernity. With the experiences of his two unsuccessful stays in America in his luggage, he wrote the highly critical “From the Modern Soul of America ” (1889). Several times it is repeated here that “America’s morality is money”. American theatre lacks “art”, the visual arts clearly need “impulsive guidance”, and poetry is “desolately unreal and talentless”.
But when Hamsun shortly afterwards wanted to mark his distance from the established Norwegian authors, he again resorted to the word “modern”, but now with a more positive connotation: He himself believed that he stood for the future and the new literature, while Ibsen and Kielland were yesterday’s men. While he emphasized depicting the spiritual life of modern people, the “breakthrough authors” were still stuck in what he believed was an old-fashioned portrayal of characters. And in many ways Hamsun was right: With Hunger (1890), in which he describes the nameless author’s struggle to survive, he also gave voice to urban experiences that were new in Norway. Hunger also depicts a breakthrough period in the relationship between author and market. The conflict between the author’s desire for originality and the market’s demands forms a line of conflict in the text.
Hamsun's fascination with the possibilities and challenges of modernity is also evident in the lesser-known parts of his writings. In the novel Ny jord (1893), some likeable and enterprising businessmen, Tidemand and Henriksen, are depicted, who create value and development through their work. The main character Coldevin becomes a spokesman for the businessmen, and questions the fact that "[…] one admires him [the author] far more than the most capable businessman or the most talented practitioner". He continues: "In my opinion, there are truly great talents among our youth in the merchant class. And I could advise you to pay a little attention to this, it is not the right way to go. They build ships, open markets, do complicated business on a completely unprecedented scale..." These "talents" work late and early in their wholesale companies. The business of trade is not just about making money, but is portrayed as a bold, almost magical game: "Turnover lives its bustling life, let us thank it! From it will arise renewal."
Although modernity is a consistent feature of his writing, it is not the same representation of modernity in work after work. In the novel Pan from 1893, it may seem well hidden. The story of Lieutenant Glahn's experiences in Nordland one summer can easily be interpreted as a typical neo-romantic work with its dreamlike worship of nature. But for the attentive reader, it becomes clear that Thomas Glahn is no child of nature: In a trembling moment in the forest, he admits that he loves three things: "I love a love dream I once had, I love you and I love this stained earth." But most of all, he loves the dream. For Glahn is not some unreflective man of nature, it is the civilized, urban man's view of the "eternal day of the Nordland summers" that is depicted in Pan .
Gradually, the term “modern” would change its character for Hamsun. From being a term of honor that could be used to distinguish himself from other authors, especially with regard to character portrayal, “modern” became a more social category for Hamsun. We see this, among other things, in the novels Benoni (1907) and Rosa (1908) , where The depiction of modernity has taken on a more external and humorous form. Here, the fate of the upstart is not least depicted in the herring boom of the 1870s. When the helpless postman Benoni Hartvigsen becomes a big shot in the village through a lucky herring rod, the display of his lack of human form is made into a criticism of the unpredictable fluctuations of modernity. When someone is moved from their place and made bigger than they are, it has comic consequences. Poor postman Benoni can never fill the role of the old nesse king Mack, the text seems to tell us. Superficial civilization is set against education and old culture. We find the same theme in the Segelfoss books ( Children of Time , 1913 and Segelfoss Town , 1915): The fascination with the new era and the sorrow over lost tradition constitute a central tension in the texts. But at the same time, it is a paradox that Hamsun's novels do not really have much to say about this static society. The fixed structures in the small communities of northern Norway do not become novel material until they are disrupted. What creates dynamism and movement in the novels is precisely the unrest of modernity.
This is also emphasized in the novel for which he received the Nobel Prize, The Produce of the Field (1917). It can obviously be read as Hamsun's great showdown with modern Norway. The settler Isak is the man of the future, the novel seems to tell. Isak cultivates the land and lives a frugal life with his family. On the surface, the novel sets up clear contradictions: Nature and tradition are good, culture and modernity are evil. The modern mining operation near Sellanraa may seem tempting, but Isak does not let himself be lured, like the frivolous. And the novel naturally proves Isak right: The mining operation goes bankrupt. But The Produce of the Field would not be a novel worth reading without the modern attractions: It is the tension between tradition and modernity that creates momentum in the text.
In Hamsun's great comeback , the August trilogy (1927–33), the rootless but energetic protagonist is unequivocally a representative of the spirit of the times: "He was as easy as money itself, as mechanics, trade, industry and the whole development." The novel often waves a moral finger at its own protagonist through clear narrative comments, but that does not prevent the depictions of August's great projects from being the trilogy's highlights. The tenacious farmer Ezra stands on the opposite side, and the development in the novel seems to prove him right: He becomes an advocate of a natural economy that ultimately triumphs in the text. But August's plans for the northern Norwegian fishing village of Polden to focus on Christmas tree growing, building a factory and a tobacco plantation are characterized by Hamsun's mixture of modernity fascination and reactionary ideology. However, his enduring fascination with the wanderer figure, in the form of August, is still present. Even though Ezra is ultimately "right", he is relatively flat as a figure and does not have the dimensions of the August figure.
But in Hamsun's last novel, The Ring is Broken (1936), the critique of capitalism takes on a different form. Here, Hamsun has the strange protagonist Abel live in a shed, wear dirty and shabby clothes without anyone understanding why. The social uplift that so many of his other characters have had is here replaced by a downward movement. Abel is portrayed as a psychological enigma, but also as a quiet bohemian rebel against the consumerist and careerist society. Like Hamsun, Abel is a returned American adventurer, and the experiences there have never let go of him, we understand from the novel.
The development from a peasant society to a liberal-capitalist society, from the old order to the new “disorder”, is the horizon in which Hamsun’s writings are created. One could say that Hamsun’s writings begin and end with the mark of modernity. Hamsun’s breakthrough comes with the sentence “It was during that time that I wandered around and starved in Kristiania, this marvelous city that no one leaves until he has been marked by it.” Anyone who experiences the modern, whether in the city, in America or through a lucky herring rod in Polden, can be marked by it for the rest of their lives.
Hamsun himself believed he suffered from so-called neurasthenia , a fairly widespread nervous disease that he believed he had contracted in America. His nerves had been “damaged” by the unrest and noise from the center of modernity: the high pace and hectic life were the cause of his later “nervous problems”. Perhaps the diversity of his writing can be captured by the “brand of modernity”, both in a concrete and a figurative sense.
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John Brumo is an associate professor at the Department of Nordic Studies and Literature, NTNU.
