SHRUB FOREST

"Written by me. Written today to ease my heart. I have lost my post in the café and my happy days. I have lost everything. And the café was Café Maximilian. A young gentleman in grey clothes came evening after evening with two friends and sat down at one of my tables. So many gentlemen came, they all had a kind word for me, – this one nothing. He was tall and slender, had soft, black hair and blue eyes with which he sometimes looked at me. On his upper lip a small moustache had begun to grow. ("The Slaves of Love") »

1903

Krattskog (1903) is a collection of thirteen short prose texts. The themes deal with art, politics, travel stories and love.

In the first text of the collection, "Love's Slave," we find one of Hamsun's very few female protagonists. A female waitress falls in love with one of the guests, who, however, is completely absorbed in another woman. The female narrator, however, cannot give up her dream of her beloved.

Love is also a theme in the text "The Voice of Life". A male writer H*** experiences being seduced by a young woman one evening. When he is about to leave her apartment the next morning, he discovers that the woman's recently deceased elderly husband is still lying there on a dead body.

The length of the texts varies, from two or three pages to up to eighteen.