Table Of Content

FPT $30.00 MA ENIG Kmit Hamsun one of the founders of is modern European literature. His influ- ence can be seen in the work of writers Herman as diverse as Hesse, Ernest Hemingway, and Katherine Mansfield; and Isaac Bashevis Singer said of him that he was “the father of the modern school of literature in his every aspect,” that “the whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth ce ttury stems from Hamsun.” In 1920 he ’ rrs awarded the Nobel Prize in Literatup /et, despite his importance . and the year lie spent in the United States > when he was young, very known, little is outside his native Norway, about Hamsun’s life. In an extraordinary writing career spanning some seventy ofhis ninety-three years, Hams un produced a wide variety of — work po try, plays, short-story collec- tions, and travel sketches, as well as renowned novels such es Hunger, Mysteries, Pan, and T, the Soil. Hamsun spent much _uily life in impover- ished circu aiues, supplementing his meager ear ngs as a writer by working as pig minder shoemaker, peddler, builder, and even Sunday school teacher. In this fi ' t serious study of Hamsun to be publish* outside of Norway, Robert ! Ferguson has successfully captured the rest less and enigmatic spirit of 1 lamsun as author and man, to produce a major biog- raphy of one of this century’s most impor- tant and neglected writers. His vision of 1 lamsun’s polit ic al failings is clear-sighted. SEXES omnivm civivm 'ascccui Mffiee® JLHKtyMO, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/enigmalifeofknutOOferg Enigma By the same author Drama Transfigured Night Enigma Hamsun The Knut Life of Robert Ferguson & Farrar, Straus Giroux New York © Copyright 1987 by Robert Ferguson All rights reserved First American edition, 1987 First published in Great Britain by Century Hutchinson, Ltd, 1987 Library of Congress catalog card number: 86-82752 Contents Introduction 1 1 Childhood, Restless Adolescence and the Start of a Mini- Career 5 2 1879-1882: Bjornson and the End of the Mini-Career 27 1882-1884: The American Experience 3 I 47 4 1884-1886: Convalescence and Valdres 67 5 1886-1888: The American Experience II 81 6 1888-1890: The Breakthrough: Hunger 99 1890-1893: Controversy: Mysteries the Lecture Tour and 7 , the 'Clenched Fist' Books 122 8 1893-1895: Paris, Pan and Strindberg 142 9 1895-1898: Persecution and Marriage: Victoria 163 10 1898-1906: Restless Middle Age, Depression and Divorce 182 11 1906-1911: The Sage: Retrospection, Introspection and Marie 199 12 1911-1918: Marriage and the Return to the Roots: the Segelfoss Books and The Growth of the Soil 220 13 1918-1927: The Quiet Years: Family Man and Psycho- analysis 260 14 1927-1933: The Height of Fame: the August Trilogy 290 Hamsun's 15 1933-1940: Politics 324 16 1940-1945: Hamsun's War 350 17 1945-1948: Internment, Examination and Trial 387 18 1948-1952: The Last Years: On Overgrown Paths 411 Notes 2 4 3 References 424 Select Bibliography 434 Appendix: Knut Hamsun's Complete Works 438 Index 439