Knut Hamsun was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1920.
"Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) was born in Gudbrandsdalen, Norway, and grew up in poverty in Hamarøy in Nordland. From early childhood he was a shoemaker's apprentice, but was also a road worker, stonemason, junior-level teacher, and so on. He spent some years in America, travelling and working as a tram driver, and published his impressions, chiefly satirical, under the title Fra det moderne Amerikas Aandsliv (1889) [The Intellectual Life of Modern America]. The novel Sult (1890) [Hunger] and even more so Pan (1894) led to Hamsun's literary breakthrough and Sult is regarded as the first genuinely modern novel in Norwegian literature.
"Hamsun's work is determined by a deep aversion to civilization and the belief that man's only fulfilment lies with the soil. This primitivism (and its concomitant distrust of all things modern) found its fullest expression in Hamsun's masterpiece Markens Grøde (1917) [Growth of the Soil]. His early works usually centre on an outcast, a vagabond figure, aggressively opposed to civilization. In his middle period, Hamsun's aggressiveness gives way to melancholy resignation about the loss of youth. The decay of age is the theme of such plays as Livets Spil (1896) [Game of Life] and Aftenrøde (1898) [ Sunset], as well as of the novels Under Høststjernen (1906)[Under the Autumn Star], Benoni (1908), and En Vandrer Spiller med Sordin (1909) [A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings]. In 1904 Hamsun also published a volume of poems, Det vilde Kor [The Wild Chorus].
"Hamsun's later works focused less on individual characters and more on broad attacks on civilization. Apart from Marken's Grøde one should mention Børn av Tiden (1913) [Children of the Age], Segelfoss By (1915) [Segelfoss Town] Landstrykere (1927) [Vagabonds], August (1930), Men Livet lever (1933) [The Road leads on], and Ringen sluttet (1936) [The Ring is Closed].
"Hamsun's admiration for Germany, which was of long standing, made him sympathetic toward the Nazi invasion of Norway in 1940. After the war he was sentenced to the loss of his property, temporarily put under psychiatric observation, and spent his last years in poverty. A fifteen-volume edition of his complete works was published in 1954, two years after his death."
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
Knut Hamsun died on February 19, 1952, three months before I was born. I don't think we have anything in common any more, although as a young man I shared some of his sentiments. Like Hamsun, I also now have to face up to "melancholy resignation about the loss of youth", but unlike him, my view of life has changed completely, and I now find civilisation and modernity exciting and promising. Many in our modern society have a lamentable pre-occupation with emphasising problems and proposing backward-looking, risk averse solutions, while ignoring our capacity to solve problems in new, innovative ways, and to make real technical and social advances. But back to Hamsun. I enjoyed reading some of his books, to gain an understanding of life in Norway in the late 19th and early 20th century, while simultaneously trying to learn the language. He was writing about the Norway that my grandparents grew up in. Subsequently, they emigrated to a new country, in search of better prospects, and in my grandfather's case, to escape from the oppression of his fundamentalist religious family.
So, you may ask... What has this got to do with anything? Well, nothing really. It was just a whim.
Tunes in GraemeO's tunebook: 281
| Test your hearing | July 9th 2006 |
| Musical acoustics | July 9th 2006 |
| Test your hearing online | July 9th 2006 |
| Discussions | Re: Dating fiddles | September 15th 2008 |
| Discussions | Re: Dating fiddles | September 15th 2008 |
| Discussions | Re: Edirol or Zoom h2/h4 ? | September 13th 2008 |
| Discussions | Re: Mystery tune played by Chris Duncan? | July 18th 2008 |
| Discussions | Re: fiddle help | March 30th 2008 |