Knut Hamsun: Pan, Mysteries, Hunger, and More

[Extollager]

I started reading this author almost 40 years ago. Mostly I reread Mysteries, Pan, Victoria, and Hunger. I liked his Caucasus travelogue in Wonderland.

And I've read some short pieces. I may still have a copy of Growth of the Soil that I bought many years ago, but still haven't read it. I understand it is different from the lyrical novels I mentioned above.

In the late 1990s I taught a one-shot elective course called Misfits, Rebels, "Freaks," and Holy Fools, and Mysteries was one of the texts. (Other things included the Father Zosima portion, i.e. Book 6, of The Brothers Karamazov, de Quincey's Opium Eater, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, and some short works.) I showed The Elephant Man and Herzog's Caspar Hauser movie. Hamsun's novel supplied the "misfit."

 

[GOLLUM]

Hamsun is a superb author. I really enjoyed Hunger and Mysteries. I also have copies of Victoria, Pan and Growth of the Soil...still unread.

I think if I stay here much longer I'm never going to leave.....

 

[Extollager]

Hamsun's not forgotten:

With Mysteries, Knut Hamsun rewrote the novel's rules

 

[Bick]

He's been on my mental TBR list for some time, though I own none. If I'm starting anew, what would you suggest for me? Chrons members probably have a good sense of what I like now, generally speaking...

 

[Extollager]

I'd urge you to go with Mysteries (translated by Bothmer) or Pan (translated by MacFarlane) -- probably Mysteries. I can't speak to the Tiina Nunnally translations for Penguin, being a rereader of the translations that appeared in paperback in the 1970s.