Mysteries (4 page)

Viewed in a different perspective,
Mysteries
can be seen as an absurdist work. Life in society is described as a kind of puppet show, in which the puppets dutifully repeat their lines. Some of the characters have generic names: the doctor, the lawyer, the teacher, as in an expressionist play. And in the end Nagel, who considers himself to be above the social comedy, also becomes a puppet as he is drawn to his death by his own subconscious obsessions. But by its very absurdity, Nagel’s predicament becomes tragic. The book envisages the human condition as a tragedy of mind: the more highly developed your consciousness, the more acutely you will suffer. The mind of Nagel, which perceives the before and after with a lacerated sensibility, is fraught with existential angst. The loathing instilled by life’s humiliations is akin to the nausea felt by Roquentin in Sartre’s famous 1938 novel
La Nausée.
However, unlike Roquentin, Nagel has renounced redemption through art.

Mysteries
is a very rich novel, and a brief essay cannot do justice to it. In any case, the reader will want to work out his or her own interpretation of the book, which, despite its occasional quirks and perversities, presents a bracing challenge to one’s critical imagination.

 

 

1
In regard to rootlessness, statements in the first edition of
Mysteries
echo Hamsun’s letters of the time. In a passage subsequently deleted, Nagel reflects nostalgically, “One ought to ... get on, have a house, a wife, and a dog.” (See Textual Notes, ch. 4, note 5.) In a letter to Bolette and Ole Johan Larsen of March 7, 1892, Hamsun says, “... one shouldn’t write for people, one should ... settle down in a forest, acquire a house, a wife, and a dog.”
(Knut Hamsuns brev,
ed. Harald S. Næss, I [Oslo, 1994]: 247. Hereafter cited as
Brev.
The translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.) Nevertheless, Hamsun refused to be identified with Nagel, as shown in a letter to Erik Skram of November 5,1892, where he says he cannot be responsible for “all of Nagel’s opinions” (
Brev
, 284; Knut Hamsun,
Selected Letters,
ed. Harald Næss & James McFarlane, I [Norwich, England: Norvik Press, 1990]: 163-64. Hereafter referred to as
Letters.)

2
Tore Hamsun,
Knut Hamsun
—
min far
(Oslo, 1992), 64.

3
Letter to Svend Tveraas of February 29, 1884, in
Brev,
42;
Letters,
42.

4
Harald Næss,
Knut Hamsun
(Boston, 1984), 12.

5
Letter to Nikolai Frøsland of January 19, 1886, in
Brev,
63.

6
Letter to Erik Frydenlund of September 4, 1886, in
Brev,
69;
Letters,
58.

7
Letter to the Larsens in November 1894, in
Brev,
431;
Letters,
214.

8
“Psykologisk literatur,” in
Paa Turné: Tre foredrag om litteratur,
ed. Tore Hamsun (Oslo, 1960), 51.

9
Ibid., 66.

10
Ibid., 70-71.

11
“Fra det ubevidste Sjæleliv,” in Knut Hamsun,
Artikler,
ed. Francis Bull (Oslo, 1939), 60. In his article “ ‘Et dyb af mimoser, hvori vinden puster’: Om hvordan Knut Hamsun oppdaget Nathalie Sarrautes tropismer en natt i Lillesand,”
Vinduet
46 (1992), nos. ¾, 97-101, Pal Norheim claims to find striking similarities between what Hamsun means by the mimosa metaphor in describing his aesthetic program and the meaning of tropisms in Nathalie Sarraute’s literary work.

12
“Fra det ubevidste Sjæleliv,” 61.

13
See “The Unconscious in the Aesthetic Judgment and in Artistic Production,” in Eduard von Hartmann,
Philosophy of the Unconscious,
trans. W. C. Coupland, with a Preface by C. K. Ogden (London & New York, 1931), I: 276ff.

14
Gregory Nybø,
Knut Hamsuns ‘Mysterier’
(Oslo, 1969).

15
“Den moderne norske literatur” (1896), in
Norsk skrivekunst,
ed. Erling Nielsen (Oslo, 1958), 17, and “Knut Hamsun,” in
Skildringer og stemninger fra den yngre litteratur
(Kristiania, 1897), 28.

16
See “Sidste kapitel og det første: Hamsuns og Kincks sidste bøker,” in
Norsk national kunst
(Copenhagen, 1924), 147;
Hamsun som modernist
(Copenhagen, 1975), 197; and as quoted by Arne Falck, “Storm mot
Mysterier,”
in
Ni artikler om Knut Hamsun,
ed. Arild Hamsun (Arendal, 1976), 74, from Faldbakken’s article in
Dagbladet,
August 6, 1973.

17
See Henry Miller,
The Books in My Life
(London, 1952), 40, and Updike’s review of Gerry Bothmer’s translation of
Mysteries
in the
New York Times Book Review,
August 22, 1971, 1, 30.

18
Reinhard H. Friederich, “Kafka and Hamsun’s
Mysteries,” Comparative Literature
28, no. 1 (Winter 1976): 34.

19
Nico Rost, “Aantekeningen bij het lezen van Knut Hamsun,”
De nieuwe Gids
37 (1922): 40.

20
See “Heart of Darkness,” in
The Portable Conrad,
ed. Morton Dauwen Zabel (New York, 1952), 561.

21
Janko Lavrin, “The Return of Pan (On Knut Hamsun),” in
Aspects of Modernism
(Freeport, New York, 1968), 95.

22
Matthew 6:4.

23
Myshkin even hopes that his jealous rival, the fiery Rogozhin, will eventually become Nastasya Filippovna’s “providence.” See
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh,
VIII (Leningrad, 1973): 192;
The Idiot,
trans. Constance Garnett (New York, 1935), 218.

24
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh,
XIV (Leningrad, 1976): 214-15, 223, 239;
The Brothers Karamazov,
trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York, 1991), 235-36, 245, 263.

25
Hamsun’s use of clairvoyance in
Mysteries
recalls
The Visionary
(1870) by Jonas Lie, who also grew up in Northern Norway, known for its uncanny tales of the supernatural.

26
Gregory Nybø’s study of
Mysteries
analyzes the work in terms of psychological detective fiction. His assertion that such a critical approach helps to bring out the organizing structures of the story
(Knut Hamsuns ‘Mysterier,’
16) is no doubt valid. However, the strategies of detective fiction do not by themselves unify the work. Nagel’s self-appointed exercise as a detective, in an apparent attempt to clear up the puzzling circumstances surrounding Karlsen’s death, shows up only sporadically and is abandoned well before the end of the novel.

27
The close kinship between the two heroes is suggested by several shared motifs: Nagel’s description of himself as a “stranger on earth” seems to echo Werther’s self-definition as a “wanderer, a pilgrim on earth”; Werther, like Nagel, fantasizes about meeting his beloved in the beyond; he is also associated with the color yellow, wearing a yellow vest
(The Sufferings of Young Werther,
trans. Harry Steinhauer [New York, 1970], 57, 90, 96). For further discussion, see Frank Thiess, “Das Werther-Thema in Hamsuns
Mysterien,”
in
Heimat und Weltgeist: Jabrbuch der Knut Hamsun-Gesellschaft,
ed. Hilde Fürstenberg (1960), 133-52. The classic study of the history of passion love is
L’Amour et l’Occident
(1939;
Love in the Western World,
1957).

28
Hamsun had close contacts with the circle associated with the Copenhagen journal
Ny Jord,
which published the fragment of
Hunger
in 1888. Its first three volumes, 1888-1889, featured selections from Schopenhauer’s most popular book,
Parerga and Paralipomena,
as well as critical discussion of his philosophy, and from Nietzsche’s
Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Georg Brandes’ study of Nietzsche appeared in another Danish journal during the same period: “Aristokratisk Radikalisme: En Afhandling om Friedrich Nietzsche,”
Tilskueren
6 (1889), 565-613;
Friedrich Nietzsche: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,
trans. A. G. Chater (New York, n.d.). In an 1889 article on Strindberg, from whom, according to Harald Næss, Hamsun may have acquired what Georg Brandes called his “touching blind faith in Eduard von Hartmann’s profundity”
(Brev,
I: 135; 136, note 1), Hamsun describes Hartmann as a “subtle, aristocratic author whose ... refined thoughts delight in ... losing themselves in a drunken orgy of suffering” (Hamsun,
Artikler,
41).

29
“On the Sufferings of the World,” in
Parerga and Paralipomena,
trans. T. Bailey Saunders, in K. Francke & W. G. Howard, eds.,
The German
Classics, XV (New York, 1914): 84.

30
Op. cit., 229-30.

31
See E. C. Barksdale & Daniel Popp, “Hamsun and Pasternak: The Development of Dionysian Tragedy,”
Edda
76 (1976): 343.

32
Brandes’ review of
Mysteries appeared in Politiken,
September 21, 1892.

33
Brev,
I: 280. A story published in August 1890, “Small Town Life”
(Samlede verker
[Oslo, 1992], IV: 96-109), has a similar social setting to that in
Mysteries.
Based in all likelihood on Hamsun’s stay in Lillesand during the summer of that year, it contains a trenchant expose of small-town life. Tønnes Olai, a rather mysterious figure in the story, recalls Miniman by assuming the paternity of an illegitimate child, a proposition that the latter turned down.

34
Brev,
I: 280.

35
Brev,
I: 284;
Letters,
I: 164.

36
Matthew 4:19.

37
Letter to the Larsens of May 13, 1892,
Brev,
I: 250;
Letters,
I: 150.

38
Review of
Mysteries
(trans. Gerry Bothmer) in the
New York Times Book Review,
August 22, 1971, 1, 30.

39
Entstehung und Krise des modernen Romans,
4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1963), 35.

40
The most extensive treatment of
Mysteries
in relation to modernism is a section entitled “The Modernist Perspectivization of Narrative in
Mysteries”
in Martin Humpál’s narratological study of Hamsun’s early novels,
The Roots of Modernist Narrative
(Oslo, 1998), 89-104.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Buttry, Dolores. “Music and the Musician in the Works of Knut Hamsun,”
Scandinavian Studies
53, no. 2 (1981): 171-82.

Downs, Brian.
Modern Norwegian Literature 1860-1918.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Pp. 174- 88.

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

Humpál, Martin.
The Roots of Modernist Narrative: Knut Hamsun’s Novels ‘Hunger,’ ‘Mysteries,’ and ‘Pan.’
Oslo: Solum Forlag, 1998.

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.

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

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

—“A Strange Meeting and Hamsun’s
Mysteries,” Scandinavian Studies
36 (1964): 48-58.

—“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. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. Pp. 63-86.

Popperwell, Ronald G. “Interrelatedness in Hamsun’s
Mysterier,” Scandinavian Studies
38 (1966): 295-301.

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

Wood, James. “Knut Hamsun’s Christian Perversions,” in
The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief.
New York: Random House, 1999. Pp. 75-88.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

This is the first complete translation of Knut Hamsun’s second novel,
Mysteries.
Arthur G. Chater’s rendition of 1927 was bowdlerized, presumably because the deleted pages (an episode in chapter 10) were considered too robust fare for English and American readers of the 1920s. Gerry Bothmer’s version of 1971 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is less a translation than a free adaptation of Hamsun’s original. The text is not only drastically reduced but also simplified, depriving Hamsun’s language of its quirky uniqueness and verve. In some ways Bothmer’s rendering represents a more egregious betrayal of Hamsun’s work than Robert Bly’s translation of
Hunger.

IN THE MIDDLE of last summer a small Norwegian coastal town was the scene of some highly unusual events. A stranger appeared in town, a certain Nagel, a remarkable, eccentric charlatan who did a lot of curious things and then disappeared as suddenly as he had come. What’s more, the man was visited by a mysterious young lady, who came on heaven knows what business and left after only a few hours, afraid to stay any longer. But this is not the beginning....

The beginning is as follows: When the steamer docked around six o’clock in the evening, there appeared on deck two or three passengers, including a man wearing a loud yellow suit and a wide velvet cap. This was the evening of June 12, for flags were flying all over town in honor of Miss Kielland’s engagement, which had been announced that day. The porter from the Central Hotel immediately went on board, and the man in the yellow suit handed him his luggage; at the same time he surrendered his ticket to one of the ship’s officers. But then, instead of going ashore, he began pacing up and down the deck. He seemed to be greatly agitated. When the ship’s bell rang for the third time, he hadn’t even paid his bill to the steward.