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By Root 922 0

Hamsun’s intent: to probe the deepest layers of the psyche, where irrationality reigns and ordinary cause and effect appear to be suspended. This is also the realm of the uncanny, where depth psychology meets the mystery story. The bizarre relationship between everyday reality, dream, and fairy tale in the book borders on the surreal, or on magic realism. All these new elements, grounded in the irrational, forced Hamsun to come up with a novel set of criteria for aesthetic coherence. Perhaps a musical analogy will be helpful. Despite the seeming chaos of Nagel’s mind, his story falls into a definite pattern: the repetitions, variations, and recapitulations of situations and motifs that the text reveals generate an aesthetically satisfying rhythm and a sense of completion, while at the same time producing a plausible rendering of a mind at the end of its tether.

Viewed in a different perspective, Mysteries can be seen as an absurdist work. Life in society is described as a kind of puppet show, in which the puppets dutifully repeat their lines. Some of the characters have generic names: the doctor, the lawyer, the teacher, as in an expressionist play. And in the end Nagel, who considers himself to be above the social comedy, also becomes a puppet as he is drawn to his death by his own subconscious obsessions. But by its very absurdity, Nagel’s predicament becomes tragic. The book envisages the human condition as a tragedy of mind: the more highly developed your consciousness, the more acutely you will suffer. The mind of Nagel, which perceives the before and after with a lacerated sensibility, is fraught with existential angst. The loathing instilled by life’s humiliations is akin to the nausea felt by Roquentin in Sartre’s famous 1938 novel La Nausée. However, unlike Roquentin, Nagel has renounced redemption through art.

Mysteries is a very rich novel, and a brief essay cannot do justice to it. In any case, the reader will want to work out his or her own interpretation of the book, which, despite its occasional quirks and perversities, presents a bracing challenge to one’s critical imagination.

NOTES

1 In regard to rootlessness, statements in the first edition of Mysteries echo Hamsun’s letters of the time. In a passage subsequently deleted, Nagel reflects nostalgically, “One ought to ... get on, have a house, a wife, and a dog.” (See Textual Notes, ch. 4, note 5.) In a letter to Bolette and Ole Johan Larsen of March 7, 1892, Hamsun says, “... one shouldn’t write for people, one should ... settle down in a forest, acquire a house, a wife, and a dog.” (Knut Hamsuns brev, ed. Harald S. Næss, I [Oslo, 1994]: 247. Hereafter cited as Brev. The translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.) Nevertheless, Hamsun refused to be identified with Nagel, as shown in a letter to Erik Skram of November 5,1892, where he says he cannot be responsible for “all of Nagel’s opinions” (Brev, 284; Knut Hamsun, Selected Letters, ed. Harald Næss & James McFarlane, I [Norwich, England: Norvik Press, 1990]: 163-64. Hereafter referred to as Letters.)

2 Tore Hamsun, Knut Hamsun—min far (Oslo, 1992), 64.

3 Letter to Svend Tveraas of February 29, 1884, in Brev, 42; Letters, 42.

4 Harald Næss, Knut Hamsun (Boston, 1984), 12.

5 Letter to Nikolai Frøsland of January 19, 1886, in Brev, 63.

6 Letter to Erik Frydenlund of September 4, 1886, in Brev, 69; Letters, 58.

7 Letter to the Larsens in November 1894, in Brev, 431; Letters, 214.

8 “Psykologisk literatur,” in Paa Turné: Tre foredrag om litteratur, ed. Tore Hamsun (Oslo, 1960), 51.

9 Ibid., 66.

10 Ibid., 70-71.

11 “Fra det ubevidste Sjæleliv,” in Knut Hamsun, Artikler, ed. Francis Bull (Oslo, 1939), 60. In his article “ ‘Et dyb af mimoser, hvori vinden puster’: Om hvordan Knut Hamsun oppdaget Nathalie Sarrautes tropismer en natt i Lillesand,” Vinduet 46 (1992), nos. ¾, 97-101, Pal Norheim claims to find striking similarities between what Hamsun means by the mimosa metaphor in describing his aesthetic program and the meaning of tropisms in Nathalie Sarraute’s literary work.

12 “Fra