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Hamsun (1859-1852) - "Growth of the Soil"
Posted by Michael Sympson on 16/12/2001, 16:12:47
"Happiness and nonsense are two different things."
Inger, Isak's wife is a child murderess (it was an untimely girl); in heat with every handsome visitor; yet hard working and devoted to her husband. Not exactly your average idea of a church going redneck. People acquainted with peasants will recognize the type - debts and all - except for the truncated laconism Hamsun has thought necessary to impose on his characters. I am referring to the overall diction of the book. They may not talk a whole lot, but even Norwegians at the polar circle don't speak like taciturn biker types from an Icelandic Saga. "Aye," the ingredient makes the story look more real, than factual reality would. However, himself born to a farmer and without education, Hamsun's own powers of eloquence testify against this phoney rusticity. He received the Nobel Price for it. Ironic, isn't it?
I knew peasants from many countries, and whatever may typify them - it is not a lack of eloquence. In fact Spanish intellectuals assured me that one must listen to the illiterate women in the villages to learn the purest Castilian. In England I met well-spoken peasants with academic degrees, who use to ride their tractor in bow tie, tweed jacket, and wellingtons. What all have in common is a preference for boys as heirs to the estate. That hasn't changed since Jacob had cheated Esau out of his birthright. And my travel's to Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, China, confirmed the observation, that peasants, even when they have the means, care little for the interior of their homes.
So when Inger after her absence "overdoes it a little, maybe, in cleanliness and order," it is meant to signal "that she was going to have things differently now." Aye, the penitentiary had Inger firmly set on the course to middle-class concerns. "It was her ambition to see her kids get on in the world." Soon Inger would be a woman of independent means, a dressmaker, if only she had time to spare; but a healthy dose of domestic violence is going to set her straight: "Inger had been running off the line for a long time now; and one lift up from the floor had set her in her place again. To think that a man's hard grip could work such wonders!" says the author with approval. Their oldest son is sent away to become an engineer, and even Isak, the clod, is on the course to entrepreneurship and his own sawmill.
Isak and his family are not exactly farmers - what he really is doing, is squatting on land he doesn't own. Ten dalers annually for ten years to make it legal is a bargain and commissioner Geissler the Good Lord in disguise, and like gods a bit of a con-man. As in every fairy-tale, miracles are happening: Inger literally had dropped in from nowhere, like Eve on Adam. Livestock comes with prodigious increase, again Inger functioning as the `deus ex machina.' How did their cow get pregnant? Apparently only Goldenhorn's calving reminds the author that a bull is needed.
For hundred's of pages even the goats seem to multiply like amebas - then Hamsun suddenly remembers and writes the wonderful paragraph on stinky Billy: "And was there ever anything so solemnly ridiculous to look at? Just now he had a whole lot of goats to look after, but at tirades he would get sick and tired of them all, and lie down, a bearded, thoughtful spectacle, a veritable Father Abraham. And then in a moment, up again and off after the flock. He always left a trail of sourish air behind him." How Inger could conceal her ugly deed from her husband for months and months "with straw bundles under her shirt," leaves us wondering. Don't they sleep together?
The cat fight between Olin and Inger had been rehearsed in biblical times: Sarah and Hagar, Rachel and Leah. The author keeps focus and like the bible has only ironic concern for human tragedy. However the second part shows signs of tiering - the holdings proliferate, local politicians haggle over mining concessions, but Inger still is plucking berries, "a strong woman full of weakness; it is the glow of autumn in her as in all things else." She is another Emma Bovary, and like her French sister finding the fear of the Lord in times of withdrawal. However Hamsun is now getting fed up with the blasted book and begins to put paragraphs under headlines - like in the papers. Things become repetitive: another infanticide. Out comes the soapbox.
"Tis Isak, the Margrave ... he rarely knew the day of the month - he had no bills to be met on due date; he knew what was needful. A tiller of the ground, body and soul; a man from the earliest days of cultivation to point the future (sic), eight hundred years old, and, withal, a man of the day. Lonely folk, ugly to look at and overfull of growth, but a blessing for each other, for the beasts, and for the earth." The book's accolades came unanimous. A fan in Germany, a certain Dr. Goebbels, had every soldier carry a copy with him. Every second rate author of the "Reich" felt obliged to transform the book's laconic mannerisms into parochial mediocrity. After 1945, these people hid under assumed names and wrote children's books.
So that is Hamsun's alternative world, a vision made to shine, but not really his own. How do we know? Hamsun himself had run away from it, crossing twice the ocean, never to return to this kind of life. Which is putting the lie to it all. And yet, what Hamsun might really have intended, was to write the second part to Virgil's "Georgics" - the perfect poet's perfect poem. How well did he do? Read in sequence Part II chapter 13 and Part III chapter 4 & 5 from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and then you tell me!
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Posted by Lale on 17/12/2001, 22:55:13, in reply to "Hamsun (1859-1852) - "Growth of the Soil""
I suspect you are going to make us read the whole thing in installments.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 18/12/2001, 19:30:32, in reply to "Re: Hamsun (1859-1852) - "Growth of the Soil""
Well you didn't regret the "touchstone" last time, so this here is just another one - showing how this sort of thing is to be done, if a real great author puts his mind to it.
Without wasting time on the political aspect, Hamsun is not a great artist, let alone the "greatest author of the century." He has his moments, I give him that, but he also could produce unbearable crap ("Mysteries.") I think he peaked in "Under Autumn Stars," which is very readable, but nothing special either.
As for "Blood and ... ," pardon "Growth of the Soil" I can't help coming to the conclusion that the book is a phony - and Hamsun himself, in some hidden corner of his conscience, knew it. A very elaborate phony - the diction didn't come easy to Hamsun, he must have given it some thought. (I am quite capable to see merit in an author I don't like - it's my job after all.) However ... .
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