Hunger (4 page)

Ferguson, Robert.
Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun
. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987.

Kittang, Atle. “Knut Hamsun's
Sult
: Psychological Deep Structures and Metapoetic Plot,” in
Facets of European Modernism
, ed. Janet Garton. Norwich, England: University of East Anglia, 1985. Pp. 295-308.

Larsen, Hanna Astrup.
Knut Hamsun
. New York: Knopf, 1922.

McFarlane, James W. “Knut Hamsun,” in
Ibsen and the Temper of Norwegian Literature
. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. Pp. 114-57.

———. “The Whisper of the Blood: A Study of Knut Hamsun's Early Novels,”
PMLA
71 (1956): 563-94.

Mishler, William. “Ignorance, Knowledge and Resistance to Knowledge in Hamsun's
Sult
,”
Edda
74 (1974): 161-77.

Næss, Harald.
Knut Hamsun
. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.

———.”Knut Hamsun and America,”
Scandinavian Studies
39 (1967): 305-28.

———. “Strindberg and Hamsun,” in
Structures of Influence: A Comparative Approach to August Strindberg
. University of North Carolina Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures, vol. 98, ed. Marilyn Johns Blackwell. Chapel Hill, 1981. Pp. 121-36.

———. “Who Was Hamsun's Hero?” in
The Hero in Scandinavian Literature
, ed. John M. Weinstock & Robert T. Rovinsky. Aus tin: University of Texas Press, 1975. Pp. 63-86.

Riechel, Donald C. “Knut Hamsun's ‘Imp of the Perverse': Calculation and Contradiction in
Sult
and
Mysterier
,”
Scandinavica
28 (1989): 29-53.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

THE TWO English translations of
Hunger
hitherto available are both marred by egregious flaws. The 1899 rendering by George Egerton (alias of Mary Chavelita Dunne) is an expurgated version of the first edition, with deletion of all explicitly erotic passages. Robert Bly's American translation of 1967, while based on the more authoritative revised Norwegian edition of 1907, is extremely faulty and inaccurate. It contains a myriad of errors and misreadings, confuses the geography of Kristiania (Oslo), the novel's setting, and generally does violence to Hamsun's technique and style. Thus, Bly converts Hamsun's idiosyncratic blend of present and past tense narration to a uniform past tense and fails to observe his subtle use of free indirect discourse in rendering dialogue. As a result, the constant shifts in point of view and narrative distance in Hamsun's text are elminated. Bly also seems unmindful of Hamsun's biblical allusions, with their mocking, rebellious tone and irreverent parody. After more than a century, this translation of
Hunger
finally restores Hamsun's breakthrough novel to a form that aims to be faithful to the text as written, quirks and all, while preserving maximum readability.

PART ONE

IT WAS IN THOSE DAYS when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him. . . .

Lying awake in my attic room, I hear a clock strike six downstairs. It was fairly light already and people were beginning to walk up and down the stairs. Over by the door, where my room was papered with old issues of
Morgenbladet
, I could see, very clearly, a notice from the Director of Lighthouses, and just left of it a fat, swelling ad for freshly baked bread by Fabian Olsen, Baker.

As soon as I opened my eyes I started wondering, by force of habit, whether I had anything to look forward to today. I had been somewhat hard up lately; my belongings had been taken to “Uncle” one after the other, I had grown nervous and irritable, and a couple of times I had even stayed in bed for a day or so because of dizziness. Every now and then, when I was lucky, I managed to get five kroner for an article from some newspaper or other.

As it grew lighter and lighter I started reading the ads over by the door; I could even make out the thin, grinning letters concerning “Shrouds at Madam Andersen's, main entrance to the right.” This occupied me for quite a while—I heard the clock strike eight downstairs before I rose and got dressed.

I opened the window and looked out. From where I stood I had a view of a clothesline and an open field; in the distance was a forge, left over from a burned-down blacksmith's shop where some workers were busy cleaning up. I leaned forward with my elbows on the windowsill and gazed at the sky. It promised to be a clear day. Autumn had arrived, that lovely, cool time of year when everything turns color and dies. The streets had already begun to get noisy, tempting me to go out. This empty room, where the floor rocked up and down at every step I took, was like a horrible, broken-down coffin. There was no proper lock on the door and no stove in the room; I used to lie upon my socks at night so they would dry a little before morning. The only thing I had to amuse myself with was a small red rocking chair where I used to sit in the evening, dozing and musing on all manner of things. When the wind blew hard and the doors downstairs were open, all sorts of eerie, whistling sounds floated up through the floor and out from the walls, and the
Morgenbladet
over by the door would get tears in it the length of my hand.

I stood up and searched through a bundle over in the corner by the bed for a bit of breakfast, but found nothing and went back again to the window.

God knows, I thought, if there is any point to my looking for work anymore! All those refusals, those half promises and flat noes, hopes cherished only to be dashed, fresh attempts that always came to nothing—all this had killed my courage. Finally I had applied for a job as a bill collector but been too late; besides I couldn't post a fifty-kroner bond. There was always something or other in the way. I also signed up for the Fire Department. There we stood, a half-hundred of us, in the entrance hall, throwing our chests out to give an impression of strength and fearlessness. A deputy chief went around inspecting these applicants, feeling their arm muscles and asking a question or two, and me he passed over, merely shaking his head and saying I was unfit because of my glasses. I showed up again, without glasses, standing there with knitted brows and making my eyes sharp as razors, but again the man passed over me, and he smiled—he must have recognized me. The worst of it was, my clothes were getting to be so shabby that I could no longer present myself for a position like a respectable person.

It had been going steadily downhill for me all along, and how! In the end, strange to say, I was stripped of everything under the sun, I didn't even have a comb anymore or a book to read when life became too dreary. All summer long I had haunted the cemeteries and Palace Park, where I would sit and prepare articles for the newspapers, column after column about all sorts of things—strange whimsies, moods, caprices of my restless brain. In my desperation I had often chosen the most far-fetched subjects, which cost me hours and hours of effort and were never accepted. When a piece was finished I began a fresh one, and I wasn't very often discouraged by the editor's no; I kept telling myself that, some day, I was bound to succeed. And indeed, when I was lucky and it turned out well, I would occasionally get five kroner for an afternoon's work.

Getting up from the window again, I stepped over to the washstand and sprinkled a bit of water on the shiny knees of my trousers, to darken them and make them look newer. This done, I put paper and pencil in my pocket, as usual, and went out. I stole quietly down the stairs to avoid attracting the attention of my landlady; my rent had been due a few days ago and I had nothing to pay her with anymore.

It was nine o'clock. The air was filled with voices and the rumble of carriages, an immense morning chorus that mingled with the footsteps of the pedestrians and the cracks of the coachmen's whips. This noisy traffic everywhere put me in a brighter mood immediately, and I started feeling more and more contented. Nothing was further from my mind than just taking a morning walk in the fresh air. What did my lungs care about fresh air? I was strong as a giant and could stop a coach with my bare shoulders. A strange, delicate mood, a feeling of cheerful nonchalance, had taken possession of me. I began to observe the people I met or passed, read the posters on the walls, caught a glance cast my way from a passing streetcar, and laid myself open to every trifle—all the little fortuitous things that crossed my path and disappeared.

If only one had a bite to eat on such a clear day! Overwhelmed by the impression of the happy morning, I experienced an irrepressible sense of well-being and started humming for joy for no particular reason. A woman with a basket on her arm stood outside a butcher shop pondering sausages for dinner; she glanced at me as I walked past. She had only a single tooth in the front of her mouth. Nervous and susceptible as I had become during the last few days, the woman's face made a repellent impression on me right off; that long yellow tooth looked like a little finger sticking up from her jaw, and her eyes were still full of sausage as she turned toward me. I lost my appetite instantly and felt nauseated. When I reached the Arcades I went over to the fountain and drank some water. I looked up—the clock in the tower of Our Savior's showed ten.

Continuing through the streets, I roamed about without a care in the world, stopped at a corner without having to, turned and went down a side street without an errand there. I went with the flow, borne from place to place this happy morning, rocking serenely to and fro among other happy people. The sky was clear and bright and my mind was without a shadow.

For ten minutes now I had constantly had a limping old man ahead of me. In one hand he carried a bundle, and he walked with his whole body, working for all he was worth to press ahead. I could hear how he panted from the effort, and it occurred to me that I could carry his bundle; still, I didn't try to catch up with him. On Grænsen Street I ran into Hans Pauli, who greeted me and hurried past. Why was he in such a hurry? I certainly didn't mean to ask him for a handout, and I would also presently return a blanket I had borrowed from him a few weeks ago. Once I had pulled through, I certainly didn't want to owe anybody a blanket; I might start an article this very day about the crimes of the future or the freedom of the will, anything whatever, something worth reading, something I would get at least ten kroner for. . . . And at the thought of this article I instantly felt an onrush of desire to begin right away, tapping my chock-full brain. I would find myself a suitable place in Palace Park and not rest till it was finished.

But the old cripple was still making the same wriggling movements up the street ahead of me. In the end I was getting increasingly irritated by having this decrepit creature in front of me all the time. His journey would never end, it seemed; maybe he was going to the exact same place as I, so I would have him before my eyes all the way. Agitated as I was, it appeared to me that he slowed down a little at every side street, sort of waiting to see what direction I would take, whereupon he swung his bundle high in the air once more and walked on with all his might to gain distance on me. I keep watching this bustling fellow and feel my resentment toward him swelling within me. I felt he was slowly ruining my cheery mood and dragging this pure, lovely morning down with him, into ugliness, as well. He looked like a large hobbling insect bent on grabbing a place in the world through brute force and keeping the sidewalk all for itself. When we had reached the top of the hill I refused to put up with it any longer and, turning toward a shop window, stopped to give him a chance to slip away. But when I started off again after a few minutes, the man popped up in front of me once more: he too had stood stock-still. Without thinking, I took three or four furious strides forward, caught up with him and tapped him on the shoulder.

He stopped short. We both stared at each other.

“A bit of change for milk!” he finally said, cocking his head.

Well, now I was really in for it! I fumbled in my pockets and said, “For milk, sure. Hmm. Money is scarce these days, and I don't know how badly you may need it.”

“I haven't eaten since yesterday, in Drammen,” the man said. “I don't have a penny and I'm still out of work.”

“Are you an artisan?”

“Yes, I am a welter.”

“A what?”

“A welter. For that matter, I can make shoes, too.”

“That alters the case,” I said. “Just wait a few minutes and I'll go get some money for you, a few øre anyway.”

I hastened down Pilestrædet Lane, where I knew of a pawnbroker on the second floor, someone I had never been to before. When I got inside the gate I quickly took off my vest, rolled it up and stuck it under my arm; then I walked up the stairs and knocked on the door to the shop. I made a bow and threw the vest on the counter.

“One krone and a half,” the man said.

“All right,” I said. “If it weren't for the fact that it's getting a bit tight for me, I wouldn't have parted with it.”

I got the money and the slip and retraced my steps. All things considered, this business with the vest was an excellent idea; there would even be money to spare for an ample breakfast, and by evening my monograph about the crimes of the future would be ready. Life began to look sunnier right away, and I hastened back to the man to have done with him.

“Here you are,” I said to him. “I'm glad you came to me first.”

He took the money and began to look me up and down. What did he stand there staring at? I had the impression that he examined especially the knees of my trousers, and I found this piece of impudence tiresome. Did that louse imagine I was really as poor as I looked? Hadn't I just about started writing a ten-krone article? On the whole, I had no apprehensions about the future, I had many irons in the fire. So, what business was it of this total stranger if I handed out a gratuity on such a bright morning? The man's stare annoyed me, and I decided to give him a piece of my mind before leaving him. Shrugging my shoulder, I said, “My dear man, you have gotten into a nasty habit of staring at a man's knees when he gives you a krone's worth of money.”