| Show ar effs r 1 n i nob P z 0 0 A Is IZI 0 4 y I 1 crusat ID you ever hear of knut wk ila hamsun m sun before lie be won fal M the nobel prize tor for lit fal ff grature era ture well you need I 1 nt feel lonesome unless you are an old time resident of chicago where he was a n horbe borbe car conductor back in the eighties anyway knut hamsun who rho is a norwegian and lives a near hermit life in the wilds ot of norway lias has been awarded the belated prize of 1919 whereat most americans are vastly astonished some old time chicago residents of scandinavian blood remember knut they seem to think in those days that it was spelt with three letters why sure I 1 knew him I 1 knew that knut hamsun said dr anders doe for many years prominent in den norske club ile he was such an out at the elbows lad he be was as very poor no he had no money that was in the early eighties when he came to chicago after working as a plowboy on the virgin north dakota prairies he got a job as conductor onabe on the old halsted street line the horses pulled the cars then and my it was cold on the back platform I 1 still remember knuts chapped red wrists where his coat sleeves forgot to meet his bis mittens and he carried books in his pockets always books euripides aristotle r thackeray such a dreamer I 1 the passengers used to get mad he would forget to pull the rope they missed their corners and so disaster befell conductor knut Ilam hamsun sun the halsted street horse car was not dot for him lie he le xe member the streets on pilgrimages down the line he used to call out worth north avenue tor for division street OM day an old lairy asked hams if the car was southbound hamsun scratched his big blond hair he ran forward trampling over the passengers feet are we going south he asked the driver we are going to h b 1 I 11 gro growled led tha driver and so the superintendent of the car barn gave knut hamsun the sack back ile he said the norwegian was too stupid even to cruise as skipper of a halsted street car hamsun went to new york he got a berth on a newfoundland fishing smack later ile he worked his way to norway as a seaman it Is restless life full of adventure that we find in hamsund Ham suns writings w which are properly called the authors confessions he Is truly representative of the scandinavian bohe fians mians whom he lets look in the glass in his novel the earth born in Gulbrand stal stat on august 4 1860 hamsun wrote little poems when a young shpen shoemaker laber apprentice tie he lid did not like that trade his longing for adventure drove him to the united states where he tried to make it a living as a cabin boy miner store clerk conductor and what hat not during that period he wrote a sketch or poem once in a while or aggressive agitator of atheism and anarchism isna when he believed lie he was a consumptive he was for a short hort time a preacher and devoted b his spare time and energy to the study of religious mysticism in all dilemmas of his adventurous life hamsun was hoin homesick esick when he landed at copenhagen lie was without money or friends disgusted with life he hid bid in a garret to starve himself to death his sketch hunger was the offspring of the struggle between voluntary starvation and the instinct of self preservation that could not lie conquered by the longing for the great un unknown knon when printed in a danish newspaper hunger placed hamsun in the first rank of scandinavian authors ills novel of 0 tile the same title hunger made him world famous the masterly and impressive analysis of the human soul in hunger honger Is characteristic of all of hamsund Ham Hams suns tins writings ills hla great success and fame notwithstanding knut anut hamsun continues to live a solitary life he be did not care for honors when his fiftieth birthday was celebrated throughout norway and the norwegians Norwegia ns rhapsodized over him as the greatest living poet hamsun retired to a hut in the forest near Gulbrand stal when he had reason to assume that his admirers would find him there he went further north to the hamsun farm where he be lived when a little child from there be issued his energetic honor to the young coming out for youth against age in defiance of the accepted theory of the superiority ot of the old that lie himself had not aged he be proved by his novel A wanderer plays with the Sa sardine idine subsequently he be wrote the wonderful satire of the dram gotten by the devil which showed that the he high quality of his own dramatic creations was as not adversely ad verely influenced by his big contempt of dramatic art and technique his other drama the trilogy at the door of the wealthy queen ta ills his best drama and bunken an impressive picture of the life of a debauched theologian Is powerful still better are hamsund Ham Harn suns novels amon among 9 them Illys editor lange and the loe story pa pan n all these writings are a strange mixture of rude realism sin dreamy mysticism and impulsive sentiment on the one hand band hamsun lets loose the reins of and introduces us to a world of wonderfully dear dreams on the other hand lie Is it a cold critic of the human soul who exposes the weak side of modern life with penetrating intellect it is sold that pages of hamsund Ham Harn suns work hae appeared in 23 languages but it Is safe to say that the average well read american had never heard of him in short the award comes as a distinct shock by what ahat mischance nil all those these years has he overlooked the norwegian writers writer 9 name suddenly to be humiliated by his own onn ignorance if he subjects to examination his acquaintances who have earned the reputation of being explorers in lie world of books it may inny be some consolation to find that they are no better informed about hamsun and his works have american publishers done their duty to a country whose e forests are arc rapidly being depleted in the cause of literature in slighting an author held worthy by the stockholm jury of signal honors in former years when file nobel prize winners were announced I 1 there here was no such cause for self reproach at least it was reassuring to know that they were persons of worldwide world wide renown however widely read sully stilly bjarnson mistral Il echegaray lacz car ducal kipling paul von ibey heyse ge MIP alop ter linek and the rest uli whether ethor brench Jer norwegian italian or Bel belgian glan for the occasion needed no introduction I 1 in rod ait inn then i in luig come the ilie crowning of verber artier Held enstam the swede and after a gap of three years it Is now the turn of knut hamsun the norwegian evidently if 1 americans are to keep up with the times they must pay more attention to the scandinavian languages or put the translators to work it Is no impeachment of the judges judge or the prize winner that hamsund Ham suns fame should have been so long in crossing the atlantic although his romance romalice hunger was published as long ago as 1888 the nobel prize e under the terms of the founder Is it to 0 be given annually to the person who shall have produced the greatest work in the ideal sense in the world of letters the names are apparently those of authors with a w ide continental rep rather than those most esteemed by their own compatriots hamsun Is evidently a born writer perhaps his boyhood in the far north helped to make hiru him a writer poet and dreamer the long arctic nights may have brought out the hereditary trait for such a nature as ills his Is described paradoxical and rebellious rebellions as it Is poetic and picturesque seems necessarily the final fruit of powerful hereditary redi tary tendencies and his big peasant forbears are said to have been marked out from their neighbors del bbous at least once in each generation by an artistic tendency that made of them skilled craftsmen at any rate from the time he learned to make his letters he was striving at literary creation and when at seventeen he consented co to be apprenticed to a shoemaker aker it was in order that b he e might earn the money to have print printed ed at his own expense his first two C complete works a short novel and a ton long poem the next use he made of his bis apprenticeship was uns to jump the job with some more savings and go to chris where villere he hoped to work his way through the university but in that hope he be failed there were two reasons tor for this failure tile the more important was that he had hoped to pay for his lectures by selling belling stuff to the Christ lania publishers of newspapers and periodicals and lie he do it they did not want anat his fits poetry his fiction or ills his essays this failure produced tile the second leason why he could not remain at tile the university hu he lacame either an unbearable De nu nuisance lance to his fellow students or the butt of their jibes they did not understand him and he made no effort to he be understood so lie he left the university lind and came to america hamsun Ilam sun like other geniuses was apparently born to he misunderstood anyway shallow published in 1893 was the result of hamsund Ham suns life among the bohemian Bohem ians 3 of after his street car experience in chicago it does not seem to have anve been a pleasant period in his life E kil I 1 dently he was no DO better understood or liked by the than llian he had been by the students student at the lie university a dozen years I 1 before hamsun took his revenge liy ills violent attack on the hohe minni in shallow soil the same lire life has been described by in a enuch more good humored way fly hamsund Ham suns career and final success seem to point anew the moral that it 1 lord lard to lo keep a good cooil man down via ha I 1 ud lid u hard life aid success t deeni zeroed ed a lucre ignis fa batulis tulis but lie he kept kepi oo on trying |
