Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [11]
13 See “The Unconscious in the Aesthetic Judgment and in Artistic Production,” in Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious, trans. W. C. Coupland, with a Preface by C. K. Ogden (London & New York, 1931), I: 276ff.
14 Gregory Nybø, Knut Hamsuns ‘Mysterier’ (Oslo, 1969).
15 “Den moderne norske literatur” (1896), in Norsk skrivekunst, ed. Erling Nielsen (Oslo, 1958), 17, and “Knut Hamsun,” in Skildringer og stemninger fra den yngre litteratur (Kristiania, 1897), 28.
16 See “Sidste kapitel og det første: Hamsuns og Kincks sidste bøker,” in Norsk national kunst (Copenhagen, 1924), 147; Hamsun som modernist (Copenhagen, 1975), 197; and as quoted by Arne Falck, “Storm mot Mysterier,” in Ni artikler om Knut Hamsun, ed. Arild Hamsun (Arendal, 1976), 74, from Faldbakken’s article in Dagbladet, August 6, 1973.
17 See Henry Miller, The Books in My Life (London, 1952), 40, and Updike’s review of Gerry Bothmer’s translation of Mysteries in the New York Times Book Review, August 22, 1971, 1, 30.
18 Reinhard H. Friederich, “Kafka and Hamsun’s Mysteries,” Comparative Literature 28, no. 1 (Winter 1976): 34.
19 Nico Rost, “Aantekeningen bij het lezen van Knut Hamsun,” De nieuwe Gids 37 (1922): 40.
20 See “Heart of Darkness,” in The Portable Conrad, ed. Morton Dauwen Zabel (New York, 1952), 561.
21 Janko Lavrin, “The Return of Pan (On Knut Hamsun),” in Aspects of Modernism (Freeport, New York, 1968), 95.
22 Matthew 6:4.
23 Myshkin even hopes that his jealous rival, the fiery Rogozhin, will eventually become Nastasya Filippovna’s “providence.” See Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, VIII (Leningrad, 1973): 192; The Idiot, trans. Constance Garnett (New York, 1935), 218.
24 Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, XIV (Leningrad, 1976): 214-15, 223, 239; The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York, 1991), 235-36, 245, 263.
25 Hamsun’s use of clairvoyance in Mysteries recalls The Visionary (1870) by Jonas Lie, who also grew up in Northern Norway, known for its uncanny tales of the supernatural.
26 Gregory Nybø’s study of Mysteries analyzes the work in terms of psychological detective fiction. His assertion that such a critical approach helps to bring out the organizing structures of the story (Knut Hamsuns ‘Mysterier,’ 16) is no doubt valid. However, the strategies of detective fiction do not by themselves unify the work. Nagel’s self-appointed exercise as a detective, in an apparent attempt to clear up the puzzling circumstances surrounding Karlsen’s death, shows up only sporadically and is abandoned well before the end of the novel.
27 The close kinship between the two heroes is suggested by several shared motifs: Nagel’s description of himself as a “stranger on earth” seems to echo Werther’s self-definition as a “wanderer, a pilgrim on earth”; Werther, like Nagel, fantasizes about meeting his beloved in the beyond; he is also associated with the color yellow, wearing a yellow vest (The Sufferings of Young Werther, trans. Harry Steinhauer [New York, 1970], 57, 90, 96). For further discussion, see Frank Thiess, “Das Werther-Thema in Hamsuns Mysterien,” in Heimat und Weltgeist: Jabrbuch der Knut Hamsun-Gesellschaft, ed. Hilde Fürstenberg (1960), 133-52. The classic study of the history of passion love is L’Amour et l’Occident (1939; Love in the Western World, 1957).
28 Hamsun had close contacts with the circle associated with the Copenhagen journal Ny Jord, which published the fragment of Hunger in 1888. Its first three volumes, 1888-1889, featured selections from Schopenhauer’s most popular book, Parerga and Paralipomena, as well as critical discussion of his philosophy, and from Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. Georg Brandes’ study of Nietzsche appeared in another Danish journal during the same period: “Aristokratisk Radikalisme: En Afhandling om Friedrich Nietzsche,” Tilskueren 6 (1889), 565-613; Friedrich Nietzsche: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism, trans. A. G. Chater (New York, n.d.). In an 1889 article on Strindberg, from whom,