THE ORIENT

The Orientals seem to me to stand high in ethical wisdom. They were from ancient times the happy possessors of contentment with life, they smiled at the restless antics of the Occidentals and bowed their heads in contemplative calm, they had enough of their own. ("Festina lente", 1928)

At the turn of 1898/1899, Hamsun embarked on a journey through Finland, via Russia to Turkey, together with his then wife Bergljot Göpfert. The journey lasted six weeks, and the impressions from the trip were collected and published in the humorous travelogue In Wonderland. Experiences and Dreams in the Caucasus (1903).

Hamsun was fascinated by oriental culture and values. He found similarities between his childhood peasant environment and the exotic East.

For Hamsun, the Orient represented contemplative calm, fatalism and harmony, as expressed in the poem "Skjærgårdsø" and the article "Festina lente". In the play Queen Tamara (1903), the plot is inspired by Georgian history, which Hamsun had become acquainted with during his journey to the Caucasus.