SELF-MANUFACTURING

I will remember that I once went to the altar in church. It was when I was confirmed. The priest put something in my mouth, and afterwards he let me sip a glass. There were many people around who were looking at it, but they held back and did not smile. Why remember this now? I have no use for it and there is no wisdom in it. It just carries me away because I am happy and excited. I think it is called Hugskott. (On Overgrown Paths, 1949)

Hamsun often used details from his own life in his poetry, and the distinction between life and fiction is not always clear.

Hamsun drew inspiration from events and people he had met, and he also used features from himself and his own life. In the Wanderer trilogy, he gives the main character his own birth name, Knut Pedersen, and in Markens grøde (1917), sheriff Geissler depicts a childhood memory from Lom in Gudbrandsdalen, where Hamsun himself lived for the first three years.

The clearest use of it by himself is found in the travelogue In Wonderland (1903), where Hamsun tells of a journey to the Orient that he made with his then wife, Bergljot Göpfert.

The most fascinating self-presentation, however, is found in På jengrodde stier (1949), where the mixture of biography and fiction provides an interesting picture of the aging and stigmatized private person and author Knut Hamsun in the time immediately following others.