“It is a splendid thing to exist sometimes.”
In this video I will summarise and analyse Knut Hamsun’s masterpiece,
Hunger and tell you 10 things you should know about it.
Knut Hamsun (1859 –1952) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Norwegians loved his
writing but hated his support for the Nazi Germany. Thomas Mann and Charles Bukowski
loved his psychological writing style focusing on the interior monologues or stream of consciousness
which also influenced Proust, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Hamsun, like Nietzsche,
disliked modernity in favour of rural life. His protagonists were mostly social outcasts.
Hunger or the Norwegian title Sult was published in 1890 and translated
in English in 1899. It’s often called the first modernist novel.
Okay, this novel is set in Kristiania, the old name of Oslo. The un-named protagonist
is a struggling writer unable to pay his rent or buy food. He kind of sleep-walks from park
bench to park bench, from prison to his work. He is not in control of his life.
Once he is so hungry he chews on his fingers, and worse still almost eats his own pencil, the very
tool that allows him to be a writer. But he always refuses to take money when someone offers him. In
the same way, Bjartur in Independent People by Laxness refuses to be in debt to others.
One time he sees a girl waiting outside his room, he asks her to take off her veil so he can see
her face but she refuses. Later they meet again but they are back and forth and nothing happens.
Then one day he is kicked out of his lodging for interfering with the family’s affairs. At the end,
he volunteers to be a crew on a boat heading to England. We don't know whether he gets to
England or he is still drifting at seas. “The dark monsters out there would suck me up when
night came on, and they would carry me far across the sea and through strange lands where
no humans lived.” Ultimately he was dreaming of getting away from humans and modernity.
Now I will tell you 10 things about the novel.
1 Dostoevsky
It’s very similar to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Like Raskolnikov, our hero avoids
his landlady for unpaid rent. Later as he wanders the street, homeless, he meets a man who greets
him with a raised axe which is funny but also reminds you of Raskolnikov carrying one to kill
the women. Despite his poverty, he has big plans to write a philosophical book. Raskolnikov too
had a grand plan. But our protagonist likes to be morally good, rational and sensible. I think
Knut Hamsun wanted to tell that being morally upright leads one to insanity in modern world.
2 Here and now It’s considered the first modernist novel,
because in his daily wanderings, he notices everyone and everything he sees, as if he has
come from a different planet and finds everyone interesting. He is in here and now. A quote:
“I was conscious all the time… . Despite my alienation from myself at that moment…,
I was aware of every detail of what was going on around me.” End quote.
3 Hunger:
In society we often associate artists as hungry people. But in reality most of the
authors and artists in history were well-off or not on the street like our protagonist.
But there is also a paradox here. You have to be hungry to want to change things. But
too much hunger heightens your mind so sharp that you lose your bearings, a heightened
sense of being make you go insane. You see everything. You notice every minute details.
4 Protest: It appears his hunger
is self-inflicted. He refuses to get a normal job or even steal food. One time he gets money
by mistake and keeps quiet only to confess the next day in a very chivalric way. He’s
self-destructive to show that being morally good makes you a loser in modern capitalist society.
5 God
The absence of god liberates humans or turns them into insanity. Knut Hamsun thinks god is replaced
by machine. The absence of god allowed humans to think big. Big plans, big ideas, big revolutions,
and sweeping changes. Knut Hamsun says that this is just a lie that leads us to madness.
6 Comedy The narrator, despite being a loser he laughs
at himself and the world. A funny scene is with a blind man when he starts lying to him and goes on
to invent things as the conversation progresses, starting small but growing bigger. Another time
he tries to sell his dirty blanket for three pence but nobody buys it. At some point he puts a pebble
into his mouth so he has something to mumble as he watches people and cars on the street.
7 Tool
His pencil is a character too, his only tool that guarantees his rent and food.
At one point he almost loses and then he nearly eats it when hungry but stops himself.
His pencil as a tool stops him from a complete alienation as Heidegger might have argued.
8 joy
There are moment of triumph too. For example when ideas come to him and he’s inspired to write.
It’s beautiful to see him happy. Or when his love interest, a woman he calls Ylajali
speaks to him or invites him into her room. Joy is always spontaneous.
9 emotion vs reason For thousands of years
we believed in demons and ghosts and now in conspiracy theories or nationalism,
mostly based on an emotional narrative. Also if we remain too rational, logical, sensible, we will
break down and go insane. The novel is trying to communicate that human mind is mostly irrational.
10 Storytelling Hamsun is mixing present and past tense
in the story, showing the narrator’s volatile mind and the presence of past in our lives at
present. It’s told in four acts. In each act he does pretty much the same thing. He wanders about
and meets random people. Like in our lives daily speaking, we repeat things at work and at home.
I loved reading this novel for its philosophical depth while told in a very humorous way. Life is
hard at times, but it can also be splendid, if only we learn to laugh it. Take it easy.