The great Norwegian reference in terms of novels with capital letters is knut hamsun. Mainly for its balance between preciousness in an almost lyrical way and from the bottom to the presentation of great existential dilemmas through characters of great depth.
I seem to have taken the balance of this literary blog very seriously when it comes to Nordic literature. Because in the XXI century, after hammering mercilessly with great authors of Scandinavian noir, it seems fair to go back to previous references to the irrepressible barrage of black genre (Ayy, Henning Mankell, you didn't know the school you were creating…)
The point is that if at the time I spoke of Jostein Gaarder and Mika waltari, it would not be good to forget knut hamsun, precedent of all of them, father of a Nordic literature by extension from his native Norway. One of the most particular nobel prizes that was officially recognized by the Swedish academy for his work "The blessing of the earth" and popularly won over the rest of the world for "Hunger".
Hamsun is one of those few authors whose work is perfectly preserved to be read at any time. First, because it contextualizes the human above all else, encompassing with that global vision of the writer gifted for intellectual transcendence any approach that can be extrapolated from his plots that also, for more mastery, also serve as a chronicle of his days ...
The figure of Knut Hamsun was overshadowed by his ties to Nazism. Those who admired him and exalted his work until the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, repudiated everything that bore his stamp some time later.
Although, there are those who clarify that this commitment to such a regime capable of submerging Europe in its darkest years was due to a response to Anglo-Saxon imperialism that even in the XNUMXth century continued to exploit its dominions in Africa or Asia with the only They are eager to amass wealth for the metropolis.
Thus, with its chiaroscuro periods from the Nobel Prize for Literature 1920 Until his end in misery, his bibliography was on the verge of being sentenced to oblivion after the end of the Second World War. But political trends aside, with its serious mistakes, Hamsun's work is a source for many great writers who were able to separate the character from his legacy, from Kafka but also Hemingway o Auster.
Little by little everything what was written by Hamsun it was again recovered for the cause of literature without further conditions. Because Hamsun's novels are not political proclamations of any kind. These are, above all, great stories with a great humanistic component.
Knut Hamsun's Top 3 Recommended Novels
Hunger
Hamsun was extreme, intensely vital, idealistic of the human as a romantic manifestation towards those metaphysical responses that hang like a condemnation for reason. Thus, in that undoubtedly fragile mentality, the possible blindness and clinging to an ideal that was devastating such as Nazism is understood.
Hamsun could have been a suitable victim, in view of this novel "Hunger." Because the nameless protagonist who wanders through these pages seems an aimless being charged with an inner life as overflowing as it is impossible to fit into a social environment as oppressive as the big city is for him. Poverty, misery and madness when our protagonist glimpses glory and philosophy towards wisdom. The impossible quixotic accommodation of the individual sincere with his soul but thrown into the center of the noise. One of those stories that shrink the heart, hard at times but full of that lucidity that leads to the bottom of the most blinding light.
The blessing of the land
The novel "Hunger" stands out for its transcendental declaration of literary intentions. Nor is this other more mature work by the author lagging behind in terms of intensity, formal beauty and background.
A new protagonist, this time well determined with his name, Isak and focused on his daily chores, becomes a hero of our civilization. And it is precisely acquiring that consideration in its integration with the natural, in its effort to survive the day to day exposed to the most hostile environment. It is there where the human being incarnated in Isak presents himself to us with his full existence, given to the sensory, to effort, to respect for nature.
Faced with adventures or tragedies of twentieth century novels and therefore involved in the more urban evolution, this story evokes that imperative return to nature to once again belong to the human condition freed from its own chains.
The circle has been closed
The great capacity of a writer who ends up transcending his localized narrative to extend it to any place, is the knowledge of the soul.
Hamsun proves here to be capable of descending into the well of an atavistic consciousness, of a kind of unconscious imaginary of everything human to present an essentially empathic character. We have little to do with Abel Brodersen. And yet in their vital conditions marked by the tragic we find the metaphor of our fundamental loneliness.
The very location of the island on which Abel and the rest of the characters that orbit around him move resembles that circle that unfolds around any of us from the moment we are born. Abel ends up wanting to break or at least escape from his circle. The United States is that destination dreamed of by Abel Brodersen and he will go there to find himself beyond his island.
Only that the origins always claim you, in the case of Abel with a very different situation in which circumstances compel him to make drastic decisions so as not to succumb to suffocating inertia.
