Victoria - Knut Hamsun

 VICTORIA - KNUT HAMSUN

Who makes the Nazis? What turns a man to Fascist? No-one is born that way because Fascism is not a natural human condition so what's the trigger - the spark - that leads to the burning down of one's own house and everything and everyone in it? Fascism as an ideology can unquestionably be described as evil because what Fascism leads to is certainly evil, as history has shown. There's no debate to be had. Evil begets evil - it's as simple as that.

During the Nuremberg trials, a US Army psychologist by the the name of G M Gilbert was assigned to watch the defendants and during the course of his work it became clear to him that the one characteristic that connected them all was the incapacity to feel anything toward their fellow men. Gilbert came to define the nature of evil as 'a lack of empathy' or in his exact words 'Evil is the absence of empathy'.

It's a point of view I agree with and as a guideline it's a useful tool to assess the state of play when it comes to individuals within your own personal life as well as institutions of power.

What then explains Knut Hamsun, the man who Charles Bukowski once described as being one of the greatest writers ever? What explains his collaborating with the Nazis during World War Two, becoming so close to them that he was even able to engender a meeting with Hitler himself? How can a man who is able to write what Arthur Koestler described as being one of the greatest love stories of world literature end up as a supporter and enabler of Fascism?

The book to which Koestler was referring to is Victoria, written by Knut Hamsun in 1898. Whether or not it is as Koestler proclaimed is for the individual reader to decide but it is absolutely a love story of great intensity, employing methods of post-modernism long before the term had even been invented. A story of unrequited love, thwarted not only by class and social mores but by life itself.  

To be able to write such a story the writer would need to know something of love and compassion, and even to have experienced both. To be able to write in such a way that Victoria is written, utilising streams of consciousness and deep insights into the thoughts and emotions of the characters, the writer would need to be able to empathise. 

It's very clear from reading Victoria that Knut Hamsun possessed these qualities at the time of writing it, so what happened to him? How did he end up as an ardent supporter of Hitler? How did he end up on the side of evil?

Does empathy wane over time? Can empathy be eclipsed by political naivety, denial, propaganda, stupidity and national pride? It would seem so. Which means that while Victoria is a lesson in love, the story behind it regarding its author is a lesson from history needing to be learned.

John Serpico

Dreamers - Knut Hamsun

 DREAMERS - KNUT HAMSUN

Knut Hamsun does 'whimsy' and who'd have thought? After the delirium of his masterpiece, Hunger, it would be reasonable to expect more of the same from the writer who Charles Bukowski once described as 'one of the greatest writers ever' but Hamsun is just full of surprises, some of them welcome some of them not so. Against what is probably my better judgement, Knut Hamsun is one of my favourite writers though I wouldn't go so far as Bukowski in saying he was one of the greatest. 

Just as Bukowski could no doubt have explained why Hamsun was so good (and I can probably guess why he would have held that view, particularly after having read Hunger) I could just as easily explain why he's one of my favourites though I don't think it would be very helpful to anyone or even myself. Sometimes something just is, and it's best to just leave it at that. A bit like life, really.

Dreamers was written in 1904 and is set in a small, isolated fishing village in northern Norway where we follow the trials and tribulations of Ove Rolandsen, the village telegraph operator as he drinks, fights, flirts and schemes. He's not the only one though. All the residents of the village are at it even if only within the privacy of their own homes. From housekeepers, factory owners, lay-helpers, curates and even wives of curates, they're all flirting and scheming like cast members of an endless soap opera. Roalandsen the telegraph operator is the biggest, however, albeit all done with an almost innocent charm.

In the way of storyline, there isn't much to say without giving away spoilers only that it's beautifully crafted and misses not a beat. It's precise, subtle, light, wry, amusing and a joy to read. What makes it all very likeable in fact reminded me of the magic realism as captured by Hilary Mantel in her 1989 novel, Fludd. Even more so, it very much reminded me of Federico Fellini's 1973 film Amacord, where the village of Fellini's childhood is depicted as a place of comical, beautiful and magical strangeness. Compare and contrast. Amacord being, in fact, one of my all-time favourite films so comparing Hamsun's Dreamers to it is actually high praise indeed.

John Serpico

Pan - Knut Hamsun

PAN – KNUT HAMSUN

If ever a book can be said to be heavy with symbolism then it is Pan by Knut Hamsun. On the surface it's the story of a love affair conducted over a summer between a hunter who lives alone in a hut in the woods and the daughter of a local merchant in a coastal village in northern Norway. All well and good and all very Scandinavian but it's only once you come to the end of it that you think: 'Hang on, what is this I've just read?'.

Pan is indeed the story of a love affair but it is also about the chasm and even the clash between nature and civil society. It's about perception and interpretation. It's about sex and love and the joining of the two but also about separation. It's a bee dance but with people rather than insects moving and circling around each other. It's about not knowing what to do with love when it happens. It's about the beauty of love but how it also causes pain and damage. It's about being touched by love and never being able to recover. It's about the flitting in a blink of an eye between objectivity and subjectivity, reality and dream, and truth and illusion. It's about messages communicated by actions. It's about communication via objects. It's about life in all its glory and all its knotted, bound-up frustration. It's about the beauty of the world and the ugliness within it. It's about free will. It's about contradiction, suspicion, confusion, despair, jealousy, worthiness, nature, the seasons, attrition, fragmentation, self-destruction, lust, obsession, exultation, paranoia, rivalry, pride, and sorrow.

That's all.

Whilst on the subject of Knut Hamsun, there's a conversation to be had here regarding artists, their work, their personal lives and their politics, and whether the three can or even should be separated? It's a very old debate that crops up every year or so and has just recently surfaced again.

There's a scene in The Joker where Joaquin Phoenix dances down a flight of steps to the tune of Gary Glitter's old song, Rock'n'Roll Part 2. It's well choreographed and the music fits the scene perfectly. The question being, however, that should a song by a convicted paedophile have been used at all? The answer was that Gary Glitter holds no publishing rights to the song so he wouldn't make any money from it, and that also in America the same song is often played at football matches so is viewed in a different context to how it's viewed in England.

In a recent essay, Nick Cave wrote disparagingly about anti-fascists, suggesting they are in a mutually self-sustaining marriage with the Far Right. Cave's political naivety was embarrassing and displayed a complete lack of understanding of the danger presented by the Far Right if not challenged. Could his lack of political insight be kept apart from his art or did it represent a shadow now cast upon it?

In regards to Knut Hamsun, it turns out that this towering figure in Norwegian literacy and according to Charles Bukowski “the greatest writer who has ever lived” was a supporter of Hitler, though there's no indication of this in any of his books. For Norwegians, this has apparently been the cause of endless grief for them that they've wrestled with ever since, trying to separate their world-famous writer from his political beliefs.

Does now knowing this about Hamsun colour his books? Yes, of course it does. In the same way that if Hamsun had been a vocal or even physical opponent of the Nazis it would surely enhance his books - or the reception of them at least. In the same way that you can blind taste wine you can also read books, hear music or watch films with one eye closed. Once the blind-fold is lifted, however, there is no escape from the truth which then leads to the dilemma. The saving grace is that the decision made as to whether you continue reading, listening or viewing or whether the art has been spoilt forever is a personal one. These questions are the stuff of being human. The stuff, in a way, of Knut Hamsun's writings

John Serpico