Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [153]
23 Arne Garborg (1851-1924) was a distinguished Norwegian novelist and poet who wrote chiefly in New Norwegian. Bondestudentar (1883; Peasant Students) was his first novel. The play Uforsonlige (1888; Irreconcilables), an excoriating attack on the cowardice of politicians, showed Garborg’s disenchantment with the Left.
23 Ivan Turgenev (1818-83), Russian novelist and short-story writer whose “superfluous man” in such novels as Rudin (1855), A Nest of Gentlefolk (1859), and On the Eve (1860) anticipates some of Hamsun’s heroes-or antiheroes-of the 1890s.
28 William Gladstone (1809-98), British statesman, leader of the Liberal Party from 1868 to 1894. A great reformer, Gladstone was premier four times, the beginning of the last one (1892-94) coinciding with the year in which Mysteries was completed and published.
28 “The little boy walked ...” is the first line of a poem in the peasant tale Arne (1858) by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832-1910).
29 Gjevik is a town in Oppland County, situated on the shores of Mjøsa, Norway’s largest lake, sixty miles north of Oslo. The Vardal Woods extend ca. ten miles west of Glovik. Hamsun knew the area well, having done roadwork there in 1880-81.
29 For Jairus’s daughter, raised from the dead by Jesus, see Mark 5:22ff. The heroine of Bjornson’s controversial play En Handske (1883; A Gauntlet, 1886), Svava Riis-here called Svava Bjørnson—challenges the double standard of sexual morality. A charismatic political leader, formidable orator, and social reformer as well as poet, playwright, and novelist, Bjornson was greatly admired by Hamsun despite his didactic strain. By changing the character’s name to Svava Bjornson, Nagel seems to equate her moral idealism with that of her creator. The biographer Per Amdam uses the name Svava Bjørnson Riis for this character, ostensibly for the same reason. See Bjørnstjerne Bjornson (Oslo, 1979), p. 167.
32 Kabelvag is a fishing station situated on the south side of Austvigoy, the largest of the Lofoten Islands, Nordland County, in North Norway.
34 Victor Hugo (1802-85), poet, novelist, and dramatist, and a giant in the intellectual life of his country, was viewed by many as the greatest French poet. Guy Rosa reports that the name Baron Lesdain meant nothing to any member of the Hugo Seminar and that the anecdote appears quite unbelievable. Hugo, he feels convinced, would never have allotted second place to Musset among living French writers. Alfred de Musset (1810-57) was not only a romantic poet renowned for his love lyrics, but also a novelist and playwright. -Nagel’s report on Hugo’s action during the Franco-German War is misleading. Hugo’s appeal of September 9, 1870, was not addressed to “the inhabitants of the earth” but “To the Germans” (“Aux Allemands”). In it, he challenges the German troops to “storm Paris, a city full of trembling families, where there are women, sisters, mothers, and where at this hour I, who speak to you, have my two grandchildren, one of which is still nursing.” (Actes et paroles: 1870-1871-1872 [Paris, 1872], pp. 8-9.)
35 Kungsbacka and Goteborg are within a few miles of each other on the Swedish west coast. The former is a small town, the latter a major city.
36 The “great poet” here referred to is Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), whose “Et vers” (A Verse), a four-line epigrammatic poem starting, “Life is a war with trolls” (Digte, 1871), Nagel recalls.
37 Thomas Kingo (1634-1703), bishop of Odense, Denmark, was a baroque poet and hymn writer. The hymnal he edited in 1699 contained a broad selection of his hymns. Magnus Brostrup Landstad (1802-80) was a Norwegian pastor, hymn writer, and collector of folklore. His new collection of hymns was authorized for use in religious services in 1869.
37 Høivåg (or Høvåg), a parish in Lillesand township, East Agder County, was previously a township. Lillesand, a small coastal town located ca. 15 miles northeast of Kristiansand,