Part 72 (2/2)

In 1904, after an interval of short stories, letters of travel, and poems, came the story ent.i.tled _Svoermere_. The word means ”Moths.” It also stands for something else; something for which we English, as a sensible people, have no word. Something pleasantly futile, deliciously unprofitable--foolish lovers, hovering like moths about a lamp.

But there is more than this that is untranslatable in the t.i.tle. _As_ a t.i.tle it suggests an att.i.tude of gentleness, tenderness, sympathy, toward whomsoever it describes. It is a new note in Hamsun; the opening of a new _motif_.

The main thread of the story bears a certain similarity to that of _Mysterier_, _Vicioria_, and _Pan_, being a love affair of mazy windings, a tangled skein of loves-me-loves-me-not. But it is pure comedy throughout. Rolandsen, the telegraph operator in love with Elsie Mack, is no poet; he has not even any pretensions to education or social standing. He is a cheerful, riotous ”blade,” who sports with the girls of the village, gets drunk at times, and serenades the parson's wife at night with his guitar. _Svoermere_ is the slightest of little stories in itself, but full of delightful vagaries and the most winning humour.

The story of _Benoni_, with its continuation _Rosa_, is in like vein; a tenderly humorous portrayal of love below stairs, the princ.i.p.al characters being chosen from the cla.s.s who appear as supers in _Pan_; subjects or retainers of the all-powerful Trader Mack. It is as if the sub-plots in one of Shakespeare's plays had been taken out for separate presentment, and the clown promoted to be hero in a play of his own. The cast is increased, the _milieu_ lightly drawn in _Pan_ is now shown more comprehensively and in detail, making us gradually acquainted with a whole little community, a village world, knowing little of any world beyond, and forming a microcosm in itself.

Hamsun has returned, as it were, to the scene of his pa.s.sionate youth, but in altered guise. He plays no part himself now, but is an onlooker, a stander-by, chronicling, as from a cloistered aloofness, yet with kindly wisdom always, the little things that matter in the lives of those around him. Wisdom and kindliness, sympathy and humour and understanding, these are the dominant notes of the new phase.

_Svoermere_ ends happily--for it is a story of other people's lives.

So also with Benoni and Rosa at the last. And so surely has the author established his foothold on the new ground that he can even bring in Edvarda, the ”Iselin” figure from _Pan_, once more, thus linking up his brave and l.u.s.ty comedies of middle age with the romantic tragedies of his youth, making a comprehensive pageant-play of large-hearted humanity.

Meantime, the effect upon himself is seen--and avowed. Between _Svoermere_ and _Benoni_ comes the frankly first-personal narrative of a vagabond who describes himself, upon interrogation, as ”Knut Pedersen”--which is two-thirds of Knut Pedersen Hamsund--and hailing from Nordland--which embraces Lofoten.

It does not need any showing of paper, however, to establish the ident.i.ty of Knut Pedersen, vagabond, with the author of _Pan_. The opening words of the book (”Under Hoststjaernen”) are enough. ”Indian summer, mild and warm ... it is many years now since I knew such peace. Twenty or thirty years maybe--or maybe it was in another life.

But I have felt it some time, surely, since I go about now humming a little tune; go about rejoicing, loving every straw and every stone, and feeling as if they cared for me in return....”

This is the Hamsun of _Pan_. But Hamsun now is a greater soul than in the days when Glahn, the solitary dweller in the woods, picked up a broken twig from the ground and held it lovingly, because it looked poor and forsaken; or thanked the hillock of stone outside his hut because it stood there faithfully, as a friend that waited his return.

He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men.

Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp-companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are. Here is brave comrades.h.i.+p, the sharing of adventures, the ready wit of jovial vagrants. The book is a harmless picaresque, a _geste_ of innocent rogue-errantry; its place is with _Lavengro_ and _The Cloister and the Hearth_, in that ancient, endless order of tales which link up age with age and land with land in the unaltering, unfrontiered fellows.h.i.+p of the road that kept the spirit of poetry alive through the Dark Ages.

The vagabond from Nordland has his own adventures, his _bonnes fortunes_. There is a touch of Sterne about the book; not the exaggerated super-Sterne of Tristram Shandy, with eighteenth-century-futurist blanks and marbled pages, but the fluent, casual, follow-your-fancy Sterne of the _Sentimental Journey_. Yet the vagabond himself is un.o.btrusive, ready to step back and be a chronicler the moment other figures enter into constellation. He moves among youth, himself no longer young, and among gentlefolk, as one making no claim to equal rank.

Both these features are accentuated further in the story of the Wanderer with the Mute. It is a continuation of _Under Hoststjaernen_, and forms the culmination, the acquiescent close, of the self-expressional series that began with _Sult_. The discords of tortured loveliness are now resolved into an ultimate harmony of comely resignation and rich content. ”A Wanderer may come to fifty years; he plays more softly then. Plays with muted strings.” This is the keynote of the book. The Wanderer is no longer young; it is for youth to make the stories old men tell. Tragedy is reserved for those of high estate; a wanderer in corduroy, ”such as labourers wear here in the south,” can tell the story of his chatelaine and her lovers with the self-repression of a humbler Henry Esmond, winning nothing for himself even at the last, yet feeling he is still in Nature's debt.

Hamsun's next work is _Den Siste Gloede_ (literally ”The Last Joy”).

The t.i.tle as it stands is expressive. The substantive is ”joy”--but it is so qualified by the preceding ”last,” a word of overwhelming influence in any combination, that the total effect is one of sadness.

And the book itself is a masterly presentment of gloom. Masterly--or most natural: it is often hard to say how much of Hamsun's effect is due to superlative technique and how much to the inspired disregard of all technique. _Den Siste Gloede_ is a diary of wearisome days, spent for the most part among unattractive, insignificant people at a holiday resort; the only ”action” in it is an altogether pitiful love affair, in which the narrator is involved to the slightest possible degree. The writer is throughout despondent; he feels himself out of the race; his day is past. Solitude and quiet, Nature, and his own foolish feelings--these are the ”last joys” left him now.

The book might have seemed a fitting, if pathetic, ending to the literary career of the author of _Pan_. Certainly it holds out no promise of further energy or interest in life or work. The closing words amount to a personal farewell.

Then, without warning, Hamsun enters upon a new phase of power. _Born av Tilden_ (Children of the Age) is an objective study, its main theme being the ”marriage” conflict touched upon in the Wanderer stories, and here developed in a different setting and with fuller individuality. Hamsun has here moved up a step in the social scale, from villagers of the Benoni type to the land-owning cla.s.s. There is the same conflict of temperaments that we have seen before, but less violent now; the poet's late-won calm of mind, and the level of culture from which his characters now are drawn--perhaps by instinctive selection--make for restraint. Still a romantic at heart, he becomes more cla.s.sic in form.

_Born av Tilden_ is also the story of Segelfoss, in its pa.s.sing from the tranquil dignity of a semi-feudal estate to the complex and ruthless modernity of an industrial centre. _Segelfoss By_ (1915) treats of the fortunes of the succeeding generation, and the further development of Segelfoss into a towns.h.i.+p (”By”).

Then, with _Growth of the Soil_, Hamsun achieves his greatest triumph.

Setting aside all that mattered most to himself, he turns, with the experience of a lifetime rich in conflict, to the things that matter to us all. Deliberately shorn of all that makes for mere effect, Isak stands out as an elemental figure, the symbol of Man at his best, face to face with Nature and life. There is no greater human character--reverently said--in the Bible itself.

These, then, are the steps of Hamsun's progress as an author, from the pa.s.sionate chaos of _Sult_ to the Miltonic, monumental calm of _Growth of the Soil_. The stages in themselves are full of beauty; the wistfulness of _Pan_ and _Victoria_, the kindly humour of _Svoermere_ and _Benoni_, the autumn-tinted resignation of the Wanderer with the Mute--they follow as the seasons do, each with a charm of its own, yet all deriving from one source. His muse at first is Iselin, the embodiment of adolescent longing, the dream of those ”whom delight flies because they give her chase.” The hopelessness of his own pursuit fills him with pity for mortals under the same spell, and he steps aside to be a brave, encouraging chorus, or a kindly chronicler of others' lives. And his reward is the love of a greater divinity, the G.o.ddess of field and homestead. No will-o'-the-wisp, but a presence of wisdom and calm.

THE END

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