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WANDERERS


Translated from the Norwegian of

Knut Hamsun

by W. W. Worster




With an Introduction

by W. W. Worster






CONTENTS


Under the Autumn Star


A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings




INTRODUCTION


An autobiographical element is evident in practically everything that
Hamsun has written. But it is particularly marked in the two volumes now
published under the common title of "Wanderers," as well as in the
sequel named "The Last Joy." These three works must be considered
together. They have more in common than the central figure of "Knut
Pedersen from the Northlands" through whose vision the fates of Captain
Falkenberg and his wife are gradually unfolded to us. Not only do they
refer undisguisedly to events known to be taken out of Hamsun's own
life, but they mirror his moods and thoughts and feelings during a
certain period so closely that they may well be regarded as diaries of
an unusually intimate character. It is as psychological documents of the
utmost importance to the understanding of Hamsun himself that they have
their chief significance. As a by-product, one might almost say, the
reader gets the art which reveals the story of the Falkenbergs by a
process of indirect approach equalled in its ingenuity and
verisimilitude only by Conrad's best efforts.

The line of Hamsun's artistic evolution is easily traceable through
certain stages which, however, are not separated by sharp breaks. It is
impossible to say that one stage ended and the next one began in a
certain year. Instead they overlap like tiles on a roof. Their
respective characters are strikingly symbolized by the titles of the
dramatic trilogy which Hamsun produced between 1895 and 1898--"At the
Gate of the Kingdom," "The Game of Life," and "Sunset Glow."

"Hunger" opened the first period and "Pan" marked its climax, but it
came to an end only with the eight-act drama of "Vendt the Monk" in
1902, and traces of it are to be found in everything that Hamsun ever
wrote. Lieutenant Glahn might survive the passions and defiances of
his youth and lapse into the more or less wistful resignation of Knut
Pedersen from the Northlands, but the cautious, puzzled Knut has
moments when he shows not only the Glahn limp but the Glahn fire.

Just when the second stage found clear expression is a little hard to
tell, but its most characteristic products are undoubtedly the two
volumes now offered to the American public, and it persists more or less
until 1912, when "The Last Joy" appeared, although the first signs of
Hamsun's final and greatest development showed themselves as early as
1904, when "Dreamers" was published. The difference between the second
and the third stages lies chiefly in a maturity and tolerance of vision
that restores the narrator's sense of humour and eliminates his own
personality from the story he has to tell.

Hamsun was twenty-nine when he finished "Hunger," and that was the age
given to one after another of his central figures. Glahn is twenty-nine,
of course, and so is the Monk Vendt. With Hamsun that age seemed to
stand principally for the high water mark of passion. Because of the
fire burning within themselves, his heroes had the supreme courage of
being themselves in utter defiance of codes and customs. Because of that
fire they were capable of rising above everything that life might
bring--above everything but the passing of the life-giving passion
itself. A Glahn dies, but does not grow old.

Life insists on its due course, however, and in reality passion may sink
into neurasthenia without producing suicides. Ivar Kareno discovers it
in "Sunset Glow," when, at the age of fifty, he turns renegade in more
senses than one. But even then his realization could not be fully
accepted by the author himself, still only thirty-eight, and so Kareno
steps down into the respectable and honoured sloth of age only to be
succeeded, by another hero who has not yet passed the climacteric
twenty-ninth year. Even Telegraph-Rolandsen in "Dreamers" retains the
youthful glow and charm and irresponsibility that used to be thought
inseparable from the true Hamsun character.

It is therefore with something of a shock one encounters the enigmatic
Knut Pedersen from the Northlands, who has turned from literature to
tramping, who speaks of old age as if he had reached the proverbial
three-score and ten, and who time and again slips into something like
actual whining, as when he says of himself: "Time has worn me out so
that I have grown stupid and sterile and indifferent; now I look upon a
woman merely as literature." The two volumes named "Under the Autumn
Star" and "A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings" form an unbroken cry of
regret, and the object of that regret is the hey-day of youth--that
golden age of twenty-nine--when every woman regardless of age and colour
and caste was a challenging fragment of life.

Something more than the passing of years must have characterized the
period immediately proceeding the production of the two volumes just
mentioned. 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 Bassöe 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."

Hamsun's form is always fluid. In the two works now published it
approaches formlessness. "Under the Autumn Star" is a mere sketch,
seemingly lacking both plan and plot. Much of the time Knut Pedersen is
merely thinking aloud. But out of his devious musings a purpose finally
shapes itself, and gradually we find ourselves the spectator of a
marital drama that becomes the dominant note in the sequel. The
development of this main theme is, as I have already suggested,
distinctly Conradian in its method, and looking back from the ironical
epilogue that closes "A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings," one marvels at
the art that could work such a compelling totality out of such a
miscellany of unrelated fragments.

There is a weakness common to both these works which cannot be passed up
in silence. More than once the narrator falls out of his part as a tramp
worker to rail journalistically at various things that have aroused his
particular wrath, such as the tourist traffic, the city worker and
everything relating to Switzerland. It is done very naively, too, but it
is well to remember how frequently in the past this very kind of naiveté
has associated with great genius. And whatever there be of such
shortcomings is more than balanced by the wonderful feeling for and
understanding of nature that most frequently tempt Hamsun into straying
from the straight and narrow path of conventional story telling. What
cannot be forgiven to the man who writes of "faint whisperings that come
from forest and river as if millions of nothingnesses kept streaming and
streaming," and who finds in those whisperings "one eternity coming to
an understanding with another eternity about something"?


EDWIN BJORKMAN




WANDERERS




I.


Smooth as glass the water was yesterday, and smooth as glass it is again
today. Indian summer on the island, mild and warm--ah! But there is no
sun.

It is many years now since I knew such peace. Twenty or thirty years,
maybe; or maybe it was in another life. But I have felt it some time,
surely, since I go about now humming a little tune; go about rejoicing,
loving every straw and every stone, and feeling as if they cared for me in
return.

When I go by the overgrown path, in through the woods, my heart quivers
with an unearthly joy. I call to mind a spot on the eastern shores of the
Caspian, where I once stood. All just as it is here, with the water still
and heavy and iron-grey as now. I walked through the woods, touched to the
heart, and verging on tears for sheer happiness' sake, and saying to
myself all the time: God in heaven. To be here again....

As if I had been there before.

Ah well, I may have been there once before, perhaps, coming from another
time and another land, where the woods and the woodland paths were the
same. Perhaps I was a flower then, in the woods, or perhaps a beetle, with
its home in some acacia tree.

And now I have come to this place. Perhaps I was a bird and flew all that
long way. Or the kernel in some fruit sent by a Persian trader.

See, now I am well away from the rush and crowd of the city, from people
and newspapers; I have fled away from it all, because of the calling that
came to me once more from the quiet, lonely tracts where I belong. "It
will all come right this time," I tell myself, and am full of hope. Alas,
I have fled from the city like this before, and afterwards returned. And
fled away again.

But this time I am resolved. Peace I will have, at any cost. And for the
present I have taken a room in a cottage here, with Old Gunhild to look
after me.

Here and there among the pines are rowans, with ripe coral berries; now
the berries are falling, heavy clusters striking the earth. So they reap
themselves and sow themselves again, an inconceivable abundance to be
squandered every single year. Over three hundred clusters I can count on a
single tree. And here and there about are flowers still in bloom,
obstinate things that will not die, though their time is really past.

But Old Gunhild's time is past as well--and think you she will die? She
goes about as if death were a thing did not concern her. When the
fishermen are down on the beach, painting their boats or darning nets,
comes Gunhild with her vacant eyes, but with a mind as keen as any to a
bargain.

"And what is the price of mackerel today?" she asks.

"The same as yesterday."

"Then you can keep it, for all I care."

And Gunhild goes back home.

But the fishermen know that Gunhild is not one of those that only pretend
to go away; she has gone off like that before now, up to her cottage,
without once looking back. So, "Hey" they call to her, and say they'll
make it seven to the half-dozen today, seeing she is an old customer.

And Gunhild buys her fish.

Washing hangs on the lines to dry; red petticoats and blue shirts, and
under-things of preposterous thickness, all spun and woven on the island
by the old women still left alive. But there is washing, too, of another
sort: those fine chemises without sleeves, the very thing to make a body
blue with cold, and mauve woollen undervests that pull out to no more than
the thickness of a string. And how did these abominations get there? Why,
'tis the daughters, to be sure, the young girls of the present day, who've
been in service in the towns, and earned such finery that way. Wash them
carefully, and not too often, and the things will last for just a month.
And then there is a lovely naked feeling when the holes begin to spread.

But there is none of that sort of nonsense, now, about Gunhild's shoes,
for instance. At suitable intervals, she goes round to one of the
fishermen, her like in age and mind, and gets the uppers and the soles
done in thoroughly with a powerful mess of stuff that leaves the water
simply helpless. I've seen that dubbin boiling on the beach; there's
tallow in it, and tar and resin as well.

Wandering idly along the beach yesterday, looking at driftwood and scales
and stones, I came upon a tiny bit of plate glass. How it ever got there,
is more than I can make out; but the thing seems a mistake, a very lie, to
look at. Would any fisherman, now, have rowed out here with it and laid it
down and rowed away again? I left it where it lay; it was thick and common
and vulgar; perhaps a bit of a tramcar window. Once on a time glass was
rare, and bottle-green. God's blessing on the old days, when something
could be rare!

Smoke rising now from the fisher-huts on the southern point of the island.
Evening time, and porridge cooking for supper. And when supper's done,
decent folk go to their beds, to be up again with the dawn. Only young and
foolish creatures still go trapesing round from house to house, putting
off their bedtime, not knowing what is best for themselves.




II


A man landed here this morning--come to paint the house. But Old Gunhild,
being very old indeed, and perishing with gout most times, gets him to cut
up a few days' firewood for her cooking before he starts. I've offered
many a time to cut that wood myself, but she thinks my clothes too fine,
and would not let me have the ax on any account.

This painter, now, is a short, thick-set fellow with red hair and no
beard. I watch him from behind a window as he works, to see how he handles
the ax. Then, noticing that he is talking to himself, I steal out of the
house to listen. If he makes a false stroke, he takes it patiently, and
does not trouble himself; but whenever he knocks his knuckles, he turns
irritable and says: "_Fan! Fansmagt_!" [Footnote: "The Devil! Power
of the Devil!"]--and then looks round suddenly and starts humming a tune
to cover his words.

Yes; I recognize that painter man. Only, he's not a painter at all, the
rascal, but Grindhusen, one of the men I worked with when I was roadmaking
at Skreia.

I go up to him, and ask if he remembers me, and we talk a bit.

Many, many years it is now since we were roadmenders together, Grindhusen
and I; we were youngsters then, and danced along the roads in the sorriest
of shoes, and ate what we could get as long as we had money enough for
that. But when we'd money to spare, then there would be dancing with the
girls all Saturday night, and a crowd of our fellow-workers would come
along, and the old woman in the house sold us coffee till she must have
made a little fortune. Then we worked on heart and soul another week
through, looking forward to the Saturday again. But Grindhusen, he was as
a red-headed wolf after the girls.

Did he remember the old days at Skreia?

He looks at me, taking stock of me, with something of reserve; it is quite
a while before I can draw him out to remember it at all.

Yes, he remembers Skreia well enough.

"And Anders Fila and 'Spiralen' and Petra?"

"Which one?"

"Petra--the one that was your girl."

"Ay, I remember her. I got tied up with her at last." Grindhusen falls to
chopping wood again.

"Got tied up with her, did you?"

"Ay, that was the end of it. Had to be, I suppose. What was I going to
say, now? You've turned out something fine, by the look of things."

"Why? Is it these clothes you're thinking of? You've Sunday clothes
yourself, now, haven't you?"

"What d'you give for those you've got on?"

"I can't remember, but it was nothing very much. Couldn't say exactly what
it was."

Grindhusen looks at me in astonishment and bursts out laughing.

"What? Can't remember what you paid for them?"

Then he turns serious, shakes his head, and says: "No, I dare say you
wouldn't. No. That's the way when you've money enough and beyond."

Old Gunhild comes out from the house, and seeing us standing there by the
chopping-block wasting time in idle talk, she tells Grindhusen he'd better
start on the painting.

"So you've turned painter now?" said I.

Grindhusen made no answer, and I saw I had said a thing that should not
have been said in others' hearing.




III


Grindhusen works away a couple of hours with his putty and paint, and soon
one side of the little house, the north side, facing the sea, is done all
gaily in red. At the mid-day rest, I go out and join him, with something
to drink, and we lie on the ground awhile, chatting and smoking.

"Painter? Not much of a one, and that's the truth," says he. "But if any
one comes along and asks if I can paint a bit of a wall, why, of course I
can. First-rate _Brændevin_ this you've got."

His wife and two children lived some four miles off, and he went home to
them every Saturday. There were two daughters besides, both grown up, and
one of them married. Grindhusen was a grandfather already. As soon as he'd
done painting Gunhild's cottage--two coats it was to have--he was going
off to the vicarage to dig a well. There was always work of some sort to
be had about the villages. And when winter set in, and the frost began to
bind, he would either take a turn of woodcutting in the forests or lie
idle for a spell, till something else turned up. He'd no big family to
look after now, and the morrow, no doubt, would look after itself just as
today.

"If I could only manage it," said Grindhusen, "I know what I'd do. I'd get
myself some bricklayer's tools."

"So you're a bricklayer, too?"

"Well, not much of a one, and that's the truth. But when that well's dug,
why, it'll need to be lined, that's clear...."

I sauntered about the island as usual, thinking of this and that. Peace,
peace, a heavenly peace comes to me in a voice of silence from every tree
in the wood. And now, look you, there are but few of the small birds left;
only some crows flying mutely from place to place and settling. And the
clusters from the rowans drop with a sullen thud and bury themselves in
the moss.

Grindhusen is right, perhaps: tomorrow will surely look after itself, just
as today. I have not seen a paper now these last two weeks, and, for all
that, here I am, alive and well, making great progress in respect of
inward calm; I sing, and square my shoulders, and stand bareheaded
watching the stars at night.

For eighteen years past I have sat in cafés, calling for the waiter if a
fork was not clean: I never call for Gunhild in the matter of forks clean
or not! There's Grindhusen, now, I say to myself; did you mark when he lit
his pipe, how he used the match to the very last of it, and never burned
his horny fingers? I saw a fly crawling over his hand, but he simply let
it crawl; perhaps he never noticed it was there. That is the way a man
should feel towards flies....

In the evening, Grindhusen takes the boat and rows off. I wander along the
beach, singing to myself a little, throwing stones at the water, and
hauling bits of driftwood ashore. The stars are out, and there is a moon.
In a couple of hours Grindhusen comes back, with a good set of
bricklayer's tools in the boat. Stolen them somewhere, I think to myself.
We shoulder each our load, and hide away the tools among the trees.

Then it is night, and we go each our separate way.

Grindhusen finishes his painting the following afternoon, but agrees to go
on cutting wood till six o'clock to make up a full day's work. I get out
Gunhild's boat and go off fishing, so as not to be there when he leaves. I
catch no fish, and it is cold sitting in the boat; I look at my watch
again and again. At last, about seven o'clock: he must be gone by now, I
say to myself, and I row home. Grindhusen has got over to the mainland,
and calls across to me from there: _"Farvel!"_

Something thrilled me warmly at the word; it was like a calling from my
youth, from Skreia, from days a generation gone.

I row across to him and ask:

"Can you dig that well all alone?"

"No. I'll have to take another man along."

"Take me," I said. "Wait for me here, while I go up and settle at the
house."

Half-way up I heard Grindhusen calling again:

"I can't wait here all night. And I don't believe you meant it, anyway."

"Wait just a minute. I'll be down again directly."

And Grindhusen sets himself down on the beach to wait. He knows I've some
of that first-rate _Brændevin_ still left.




IV


We came to the vicarage on a Saturday. After much doubting, Grindhusen had
at last agreed to take me as his mate. I had bought provisions and some
working clothes, and stood there now, in blouse and high boots, ready to
start work. I was free and unknown; I learned to walk with a long,
slouching stride, and for the look of a laboring man, I had that already
both in face and hands. We were to put up at the vicarage itself, and cook
our food in the brew-house across the yard.

And so we started on our digging.

I did my share of the work, and Grindhusen had no fault to find with me as
a work-mate. "You'll turn out a first-rate hand at this, after all," he
said.

Then after we'd been working a bit, the priest came out to look, and we
took off our hats. He was an oldish man, quiet and gentle in his ways and
speech; tiny wrinkles spread out fanwise from the corners of his eyes,
like the traces of a thousand kindly smiles. He was sorry to interrupt,
and hoped we wouldn't mind--but they'd so much trouble every year with the
fowls slipping through into the garden. Could we leave the well just for a
little, and come round and look at the garden wall? There was one place in
particular....

Grindhusen answered: surely; we'd manage that for him all right.

So we went up and set the crumbling wall to rights. While we were busy
there a young lady came out and stood looking on. We greeted her politely,
and I thought her a beautiful creature to see. Then a half-grown lad came
out to look, and asked all sorts of questions. The two were brother and
sister, no doubt. And the work went on easily enough with the young folk
there looking on.

Then evening came. Grindhusen went off home, leaving me behind. I slept in
the hayloft for the night.

Next day was Sunday. I dared not put on my town clothes lest they should
seem above my station, but cleaned up my working things as neatly as I
could, and idled about the place in the quiet of Sunday morning. I chatted
to the farm-hands and joined them in talking nonsense to the maids; when
the bell began ringing for church, I sent in to ask if I might borrow a
Prayer Book, and the priest's son brought me one himself. One of the men
lent me a coat; it wasn't big enough, really, but, taking off my blouse
and vest, I made it do. And so I went to church.

That inward calm I had been at such pains to build up on the island proved
all too little yet; at the first thrill of the organ I was torn from my
setting and came near to sobbing aloud. "Keep quiet, you fool," I said to
myself, "it's only neurasthenia." I had chosen a seat well apart from the
rest, and hid my emotion as best I could. I was glad when that service was
over.

When I had boiled my meat and had some dinner, I was invited into the
kitchen for a cup of coffee. And while I sat there, in came Frøkenen, the
young lady I had seen the day before; I stood up and bowed a greeting, and
she nodded in return. She was charming, with her youth and her pretty
hands. When I got up to go, I forgot myself and said:

"Most kind of you, I'm sure, my dear young lady!"

She glanced at me in astonishment, frowned, and the colour spread in her
cheeks till they burned. Then with a toss of her head she turned and left
the room. She was very young.

Well, I had done a nice thing now!

Miserable at heart, I sneaked up into the woods to hide. Impertinent fool,
why hadn't I held my tongue! Of all the ridiculous things to say....

The vicarage buildings lay on the slope of a small hill; from the top, the
land stretched away flat and level, with alternating timber and clearing.
It struck me that here would be the proper place to dig the well, and then
run a pipe-line down the slope to the house. Judging the height as nearly
as I can, it seems more than enough to give the pressure needed; on the
way back I pace out the approximate length: two hundred and fifty feet.

But what business was it of mine, after all? For Heaven's sake let me not
go making the same mistake again, and insulting folk by talking above my
station.




V


Grindhusen came out again on Monday morning, and we fell to digging as
before. The old priest came out to look, and asked if we couldn't fix a
post for him on the road up to the church. He needed it badly, that post;
it had stood there before, but had got blown down; he used it for nailing
up notices and announcements.

We set up a new post, and took pains to get it straight and upstanding as
a candle in a stick. And by the way of thanks we hooded the top with zinc.

While I was at work on the hood, I got Grindhusen to suggest that the post
should be painted red; he had still a trifle of red paint left over from
the work at Gunhild's cottage. But the priest wanted it white, and
Grindhusen was afraid to contradict, and carefully agreed to all he said,
until at last I put in a word, and said that notices on white paper would
show up better against red. At that the priest smiled, with the endless
wrinkles round his eyes, and said: "Yes, yes, of course, you're quite
right."

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