Here....

Thoughts on "Hunger" by Knut Hamsun

a scene from the 1966 film

I read this strange book for the first time last year, and finding myself back in the same place with the same familiar bookshelf, this was the first novel I wanted to re read. I have not been doing too much reading lately, and of course one of my first reactions to such a powerful work filled with life and vital thoughts is to look down upon my own writing with disgust. Fortunately for me I have always kept this great quote of Goethe's in mind ever since I first read it in Hegel: “for the great superiorities of others there is no remedy but love”. 

Perhaps the reason why Hunger could spawn feelings of inferiority in the reader is because it describes a situation that most pampered modern people are totally ignorant of. It is a matter of fact, first person account of “walking around starving in Christiania” (p.3). Christiania is now called Oslo, and the author, Knut Hamsun, actually did spend most of 1879 living in poverty in this city. The novel is not a mere work of imagination, it is more like notes on a cruel experiment conducted by God or fate, where in precise detail the subject describes the effects of starvation on his perceptive, strange, incredibly strong spirit that refuses to submit and die silently. In this situation, going without food for days on end, most of us would be utterly broken, either turning to the most desperate of crimes or lying silently waiting for death. The narrator has an almost superhuman strength, his ability to rise above pain and still laugh and joke and dream within himself places him beyond our mundane everyday realm of comprehension. But he is also stubborn, proud, and willfully self destructive, a powerful consciousness that sometimes must test its mettle in battle against itself. His strength is constantly pushed close to breaking, and the narrator is often nearly a madman, raging against the suffering that he can never quite understand or escape from:

“What in the hell is going on that a man has to turn himself into a living freak out of sheer hunger? I felt rage one more time, its final flaring up, like a muscular spasm...Here I was walking around with a better head than anyone else in the country, and a pair of fists that could, so help me God, grind a longshoreman into small bits, into powder, and i was becoming a freak from hunger in the middle of the city of Christiania! Was there any sense or reason in that? I had slept in the harness and worked day and night like a minister's mare, I had read till my eyes fell out of their sockets, and starved my hairs out of my head- and in hell's name, what for? Even whores on the street fled so as not to have to look at me. But now that was going to stop- do you hear me-stop, and hell take the whole thing.....With steadily increasing rage, I ground my teeth in despair, and with sobs and oaths I went on and roared wildly, paying no attention to the people going by. I started once more to punish my flesh, ran my forehead deliberately against lampposts, drove my fingernails deep into the backs of my hands, bit my tongue madly every time it failed to pronounce clearly and then laughed wildly whenever I caused a fairly good pain”

What a mixture of bravado, rage, and sheer misery! Such outbursts never last for long though, and he is soon following a new chain of thoughts and plans, always distracting himself from utter despair with his powers of observation and his creativity, never looking far enough into the probable future to give up entirely.

The parameters of the plot are simple. Throughout the entire novel, the narrator is completely penniless, searching desperately for 5 or 10 kroner (just a few dollars), that will bring respite for a few days from starvation and the threat of homelessness. He attempts to make his money as a writer, carrying around pencil and papers everywhere and fighting against the strange reveries and moods that his gnawing hunger brings in a desperate struggle to put some sense down on the page that can be sold, that will not end up in the editors waste basket “that looked as if it could swallow a man, bones and all. I felt sad, looking at this monstrous maw, this dragon, mouth always open, ready to receive more rejected articles, newly crushed hopes.” (119) In the course of the entire book he only makes money this way once, but he is constantly trying to write, struggling with all his might against physical pain and mental fog that never seems to break completely, sitting in the park or standing under a street lamp at night writing because he cannot afford a candle to use inside. Sometimes he is inspired and works joyfully, other times he desperately attempts to force the issue:

“I took out the manuscript and resolved firmly that I would finish the last three or four scenes; I meditated and sweated and read everything over from the beginning, but the speeches would not come. No rot now! I said, no hoity-toity stuff here! And I started to write blindly where I had broken off, I simply wrote down everything that occurred to me, just to get the play done in a hurry and get it over with. I tried to assure myself that I was experiencing a new creative mood, I lied to my own face, defrauded myself openly, and wrote on headlong as if I didn’t even need to look for the right word. This is good! I've really hit on something here! I kept whispering to myself, just get it all down! But the last speeches I had put down began to seem suspicious to me finally-they were in such stark contrast to the earlier scenes......I snapped my pencil off between my teeth, leaped up, tore my manuscript in two, ripped every page of it to shreds, threw my hat down on the street and jumped on it. “I am a lost man!” I whispered to myself. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am a lost man!” And I repeated that over and over as I went on jumping on my hat” (224)

Scenes like this capture the interplay of the comic and tragic in this book. One cannot help but laugh at such a scene, perfectly described even in translation, but the reader also feels the real despair, knows the terrible cost that these failures extract.

The rest of the time our hero is wandering the streets with no determined purpose, simply rambling around thinking thoughts that are close to madness, embarking on fantastical chains of association, obeying strange unconscious whims, observing the life around him with a sharp perceptiveness. His creative mind is both his salvation and his undoing. He is able to leave behind tormenting feelings of hunger to embark on strange mental voyages, transcending the pain and humiliation of his situation.

Not a sound came to disturb me- the soft dark had hidden the whole world from me, and buried me in a wonderful peace- only the desolate voice of stillness sounded monotonously in my ear. And the dark monsters out there wanted to pull me to themselves as soon as night came, and they wanted to take me far far over seas and through strange lands where no human being lives. And they wanted to bring me to Princess Ylayali's castle, where an undreamed of happiness was waiting for me, greater than any persons. And she herself would be sitting in a blazing room all of whose walls were amethyst, on a throne of yellow roses, and she would reach her hands out to me when I entered, greet me, and cry “Welcome” as I came near to her, and kneeled: “Welcome, O knight, to me and to my land! I have been waiting twenty summers for you, and have called your name every bright summer night, and when you were in grief I wept here, and when you slept I breathed marvellous dreams into your head...” And the beautiful creature took my hand as I rose, and led me on through long corridors where huge crowds of people shouted Hurrah, through sunlit orchards where three hundred young girls were playing and laughing, and into another chamber made all of brilliant emerald. The sun shone into it, choral music floated through the galleries and halls towards me, perfumed air moved over me. I held her hand in mine, and felt a mad occult delight shoot through my blood; I put my arms around her and she whispered “ Not here, come farther in!” So we walked into the red chamber all of whose walls were ruby- an overwhelming joy which made me faint. Then I felt her arms around me, she breathed in my face, whispering: “Welcome now, my sweet! Kiss me! Again....again....”

I had fallen asleep where I lay....I sat up, ruthlessly called back to life and misery (69)

(unhhh....maybe not quite how he pictured it, but you get the idea)

His dreams make us wish to perhaps starve as he does if it may bring us to such wondrous lands. Yet his strong will and bubbling impulses thwart his quest for money and shelter on many occasions. He stumbles onto money that would buy him his first meal of the day only to throw it away in a fit of anger or charity. This impossible puzzle of his character is what gives the book its black humour. He recognizes the absurdity of his situation, but sometimes takes positive pleasure in causing himself pain, describing these episodes in a voice unlike any other in literature. He is accidentally given someone elses change by a store clerk, but his conscience torments him into giving it away to a poor old cake seller. Days later he encounters her while starving as usual, and attempts to claim his gift back in cakes.

I didn’t give a damn if those coins I gave her were from the devil's private stock, or good honest hunks of silver from the Kongsberg mine! Enough is enough, a man can die, you know, from too much pride...

I walked over to the corner, took aim at the woman, and drew up in front of her. I smiled, nodded as though we were friends, and chose my words to give the impression that my return was very much a matter of course. “Good afternoon!” I said. “Perhaps you don’t recognize me this time?”

“No,” the woman answered slowly. “I don’t think I do.” She looked at me.

I smiled still more, as if to say her not recognizing me was one of her rare little jokes. I said, “Don't you remember, I gave you a whole pile of kroner one day? On that occasion I said nothing, as I recall, I don’t believe I did- I usually don’t in those situations. When one is dealing with honourable people, I have always found there is no need really to write everything down and, so to speak, sign a contract for every little thing. Ha-ha. Yes, I'm the one who handed you the money”

“Well, well, was that you! Yes, now I recognize you again, now that I think about it....”

I didn’t want her to start thanking me for the money, so I broke in quickly, my eyes already roving over her table looking for something to eat. “Yes, and I've come now to get the cakes.”

She didn’t understand that...

His difficult situation is made more difficult by his manic swings in temper, his struggle with himself. He alternatively beseeches and curses God, seeks to help himself and sabotages his efforts, looks for the good in his fellow man and tries to stand above him pridefully. Partly from hunger, partly from the stubbornness that keeps him alive while starving, he is forced to ride out a raging storm within himself while also being tossed about by fate.

I was making good progress until I realized that I had just churned out a nice little book report. I wonder what fine grade I would be anxiously waiting to receive..... Why am I describing this book to you imaginary readers? You would do best to pick it up with no preconceptions and enjoy this strange tale told in a unique voice on your own terms. But why would Hamsun write this book to be read in lazy comfort by us happy bourgeois as we munch a bag of chips or an apple in our nice easy chair? To impress us with his strength, his creative powers? We have difficulty relating to the hero, we feel oddly ill at ease in his company, we laugh nervous laughs at his frantic flights of fancy and utter sighs of disbelief when he gives up the money that he so desperately needs to satisfy some whim or notion of conscience. I am sure he would be laughing at us too, at our vague, comfortable impressions, our little triumphs and discomforts as we float through life. We will most likely never know this sort of suffering for the sake of ourselves, because of ourselves. Hamsun's hero never quite falls silent, never betrays himself into thinking that his impressions do not matter and should pass into nothingness. He simply wishes to speak, perhaps not caring who is listening. And in the end we try to sympathize. We understand a measure of his lost- ness, for no doubt we all feel at times cursed in this world, and cause ourselves to stumble and starve for the sake of our own misguided ideas. We love how the hero is full of life, even if his whims are sometimes foolish or a bit cruel, even if his dreams border on madness, even if his attempts at success fall painfully short. And we try to laugh in our own soft way at the black jokes at the heart of this book, for laughter is at its most sublime when it is laughter in the face of pain and suffering.