The things we do!

They mark some sort of crisis reaching to the innermost
depths of the soul it wracked with anguish and pain. Perhaps a clue to
this crisis may be found in the all too brief paragraph devoted to
Hamsun in the Norwegian "Who's who." There is a line that reads as
follows: "Married, 1898, Bergljot Bassoe Bech (marriage dissolved);
1908, Marie Andersen." The man that wrote "Under the Autumn Star" was
unhappy. But he was also an artist. In that book the artist within him
is struggling for his existence. In "A Wanderer Plays with Muted
Strings" the artist is beginning to assert himself more and more, and
that he had conquered in the meantime we know by "Benoni" and "Rosa"
which appeared in 1908. The crisis was past, but echoes of it were heard
as late as 1912, the year of "Last Joy," which well may be called
Hamsun's most melancholy book. Yet that is the book which seems to have
paved the way and laid the foundation for "The Growth of the Soil"--just
as "Dreamers" was a sketch out of which in due time grew "Children of
the Time" and "Segelfoss Town.


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