Good choice!

     Reading Norwegian author Jon Fosse's books re-ignited an interest in the Norwegian writer, the late Knut Hamsun's, (died in 1952), writings. After sharing Pan with M and, after a good discussion of it with her, next on the list was Growth Of The Soil, for which Hamsun won the Nobel in 1920. It was a good choice.

    Bashevis Singer, the Yiddish writer called Hamsun "...the father of the modern school of literature in his every aspect--his subjective-ness, his fragmentariness, his use of flashbacks, his lyricism....The whole modern school of  fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun."  Sadly Hamsun's mistaken embrace of National Socialism during WWII sullied his reputation. Yet. he was a pioneering writer.

   Growth of the Soil is the story of Isak, a homesteader in northern Norway who successfully fashions a large farm out of a clearing in the forest. The book is a paean to nature over culture, a common theme in Hamsun's writings. Geissler, the former sheriff who plays a large, enigmatic role in the story, is speaking to Sivert, the son who will succeed Isak. "Let's take you people at Sellanra: {Isak's farm} you look every day at the blue mountains, they're not invented things, they're old mountains, rooted deep in the past; but they are your companions. There you are, living together with heaven and earth, at one with them, at one with the wide horizon and the rootedness. You have no need of a sword in your hand, you walk through life barehanded and bareheaded in the midst of a great kindness. Look there is nature, it belongs to you and yours! Man and nature do not bombard each other, they are agreed; they do not compete or run a race against something, they go together. You Sellanra folks live and have your being in the midst of all this." P. 318 

    This is the essence of Hamsun's view of nature against which culture cannot repeat. The well told story of Growth Of The Soil is the interplay between the two. One of Isak's sons is of nature and the other of culture, one takes up the farm the other emigrates to America. 

    After 30+ years rereading this masterpiece was a delight.

Takk for alt,

Al