An autobiographical element is evident in practically everything that Hamsun has written. But it is particularly marked in the two volumes now published under the common title of “Wanderers,” as well as in the sequel named “The Last Joy.” These three works must be considered together. They have more in common than the central figure of “Knut Pedersen from the Northlands” through whose vision the fates of Captain Falkenberg and his wife are gradually unfolded to us. Not only do they refer undisguisedly to events known to be taken out of Hamsun’s own life, but they mirror his moods and thoughts and feelings during a certain period so closely that they may well be regarded as diaries of an unusually intimate character. It is as psychological documents of the utmost importance to the understanding of Hamsun himself that they have their chief significance. As a by-product2, one might almost say, the reader gets the art which reveals the story of the Falkenbergs by a process of indirect approach equalled in its ingenuity3 and verisimilitude only by Conrad’s best efforts.
The line of Hamsun’s artistic4 evolution is easily traceable through certain stages which, however, are not separated by sharp breaks. It is impossible to say that one stage ended and the next one began in a certain year. Instead they overlap5 like tiles on a roof. Their respective characters are strikingly symbolized6 by the titles of the dramatic trilogy which Hamsun produced between 1895 and 1898 —“At the Gate of the Kingdom,” “The Game of Life,” and “Sunset Glow.”
“Hunger” opened the first period and “Pan” marked its climax7, but it came to an end only with the eight-act drama of “Vendt the Monk8” in 1902, and traces of it are to be found in everything that Hamsun ever wrote. Lieutenant9 Glahn might survive the passions and defiances of his youth and lapse11 into the more or less wistful resignation of Knut Pedersen from the Northlands, but the cautious, puzzled Knut has moments when he shows not only the Glahn limp but the Glahn fire.
Just when the second stage found clear expression is a little hard to tell, but its most characteristic products are undoubtedly12 the two volumes now offered to the American public, and it persists more or less until 1912, when “The Last Joy” appeared, although the first signs of Hamsun’s final and greatest development showed themselves as early as 1904, when “Dreamers” was published. The difference between the second and the third stages lies chiefly in a maturity13 and tolerance14 of vision that restores the narrator’s sense of humour and eliminates his own personality from the story he has to tell.
Hamsun was twenty-nine when he finished “Hunger,” and that was the age given to one after another of his central figures. Glahn is twenty-nine, of course, and so is the Monk Vendt. With Hamsun that age seemed to stand principally for the high water mark of passion. Because of the fire burning within themselves, his heroes had the supreme15 courage of being themselves in utter defiance10 of codes and customs. Because of that fire they were capable of rising above everything that life might bring — above everything but the passing of the life-giving passion itself. A Glahn dies, but does not grow old.
Life insists on its due course, however, and in reality passion may sink into neurasthenia without producing suicides. Ivar Kareno discovers it in “Sunset Glow,” when, at the age of fifty, he turns renegade in more senses than one. But even then his realization16 could not be fully17 accepted by the author himself, still only thirty-eight, and so Kareno steps down into the respectable and honoured sloth18 of age only to be succeeded, by another hero who has not yet passed the climacteric twenty-ninth year. Even Telegraph-Rolandsen in “Dreamers” retains the youthful glow and charm and irresponsibility that used to be thought inseparable from the true Hamsun character.
It is therefore with something of a shock one encounters the enigmatic Knut Pedersen from the Northlands, who has turned from literature to tramping, who speaks of old age as if he had reached the proverbial three-score and ten, and who time and again slips into something like actual whining19, as when he says of himself: “Time has worn me out so that I have grown stupid and sterile20 and indifferent; now I look upon a woman merely as literature.” The two volumes named “Under the Autumn Star” and “A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings” form an unbroken cry of regret, and the object of that regret is the hey-day of youth — that golden age of twenty-nine — when every woman regardless of age and colour and caste was a challenging fragment of life.
Something more than the passing of years must have characterized the period immediately proceeding22 the production of the two volumes just mentioned. They mark some sort of crisis reaching to the innermost depths of the soul it wracked with anguish23 and pain. Perhaps a clue to this crisis may be found in the all too brief paragraph devoted24 to Hamsun in the Norwegian “Who’s who.” There is a line that reads as follows: “Married, 1898, Bergljot Bass25?e Bech (marriage dissolved); 1908, Marie Andersen.” The man that wrote “Under the Autumn Star” was unhappy. But he was also an artist. In that book the artist within him is struggling for his existence. In “A Wanderer Plays with Muted Strings” the artist is beginning to assert himself more and more, and that he had conquered in the meantime we know by “Benoni” and “Rosa” which appeared in 1908. The crisis was past, but echoes of it were heard as late as 1912, the year of “Last Joy,” which well may be called Hamsun’s most melancholy26 book. Yet that is the book which seems to have paved the way and laid the foundation for “The Growth of the Soil”— just as “Dreamers” was a sketch27 out of which in due time grew “Children of the Time” and “Segelfoss Town.”
Hamsun’s form is always fluid. In the two works now published it approaches formlessness. “Under the Autumn Star” is a mere21 sketch, seemingly lacking both plan and plot. Much of the time Knut Pedersen is merely thinking aloud. But out of his devious28 musings a purpose finally shapes itself, and gradually we find ourselves the spectator of a marital29 drama that becomes the dominant30 note in the sequel. The development of this main theme is, as I have already suggested, distinctly Conradian in its method, and looking back from the ironical31 epilogue that closes “A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings,” one marvels32 at the art that could work such a compelling totality out of such a miscellany of unrelated fragments.
There is a weakness common to both these works which cannot be passed up in silence. More than once the narrator falls out of his part as a tramp worker to rail journalistically at various things that have aroused his particular wrath33, such as the tourist traffic, the city worker and everything relating to Switzerland. It is done very naively34, too, but it is well to remember how frequently in the past this very kind of naiveté has associated with great genius. And whatever there be of such shortcomings is more than balanced by the wonderful feeling for and understanding of nature that most frequently tempt35 Hamsun into straying from the straight and narrow path of conventional story telling. What cannot be forgiven to the man who writes of “faint whisperings that come from forest and river as if millions of nothingnesses kept streaming and streaming,” and who finds in those whisperings “one eternity36 coming to an understanding with another eternity about something”?
EDWIN BJORKMAN
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1 strings | |
n.弦 | |
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2 by-product | |
n.副产品,附带产生的结果 | |
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3 ingenuity | |
n.别出心裁;善于发明创造 | |
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4 artistic | |
adj.艺术(家)的,美术(家)的;善于艺术创作的 | |
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5 overlap | |
v.重叠,与…交叠;n.重叠 | |
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6 symbolized | |
v.象征,作为…的象征( symbolize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7 climax | |
n.顶点;高潮;v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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8 monk | |
n.和尚,僧侣,修道士 | |
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9 lieutenant | |
n.陆军中尉,海军上尉;代理官员,副职官员 | |
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10 defiance | |
n.挑战,挑衅,蔑视,违抗 | |
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11 lapse | |
n.过失,流逝,失效,抛弃信仰,间隔;vi.堕落,停止,失效,流逝;vt.使失效 | |
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12 undoubtedly | |
adv.确实地,无疑地 | |
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13 maturity | |
n.成熟;完成;(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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14 tolerance | |
n.宽容;容忍,忍受;耐药力;公差 | |
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15 supreme | |
adj.极度的,最重要的;至高的,最高的 | |
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16 realization | |
n.实现;认识到,深刻了解 | |
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17 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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18 sloth | |
n.[动]树懒;懒惰,懒散 | |
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19 whining | |
n. 抱怨,牢骚 v. 哭诉,发牢骚 | |
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20 sterile | |
adj.不毛的,不孕的,无菌的,枯燥的,贫瘠的 | |
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21 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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22 proceeding | |
n.行动,进行,(pl.)会议录,学报 | |
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23 anguish | |
n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦,烦恼 | |
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24 devoted | |
adj.忠诚的,忠实的,热心的,献身于...的 | |
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25 bass | |
n.男低音(歌手);低音乐器;低音大提琴 | |
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26 melancholy | |
n.忧郁,愁思;adj.令人感伤(沮丧)的,忧郁的 | |
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27 sketch | |
n.草图;梗概;素描;v.素描;概述 | |
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28 devious | |
adj.不坦率的,狡猾的;迂回的,曲折的 | |
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29 marital | |
adj.婚姻的,夫妻的 | |
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30 dominant | |
adj.支配的,统治的;占优势的;显性的;n.主因,要素,主要的人(或物);显性基因 | |
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31 ironical | |
adj.讽刺的,冷嘲的 | |
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32 marvels | |
n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 );令人惊奇的事物(或事例);不平凡的成果;成就v.惊奇,对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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33 wrath | |
n.愤怒,愤慨,暴怒 | |
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34 naively | |
adv. 天真地 | |
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35 tempt | |
vt.引诱,勾引,吸引,引起…的兴趣 | |
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36 eternity | |
n.不朽,来世;永恒,无穷 | |
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