What matters, after all, is not what critics will say of its esthetic merits. The supreme importance of the book lies in the fact that to Hamsun's own generation it has given poetic form to a message for which the world was thirsting. At a time when humanity was sick of destruction he reminded us that nature's fountain of renewal is inexhaustible. In an age which has been saddened by the pernicious doctrine of competition, the survival of the fittest, and all the slogans of false Darwinism, he preached the gospel of friendliness. We have been told that nature is cruel; Hamsun says that nature is friendly and beneficent. We have been told that all existence rests on fierce competition in which the weaker must go under. He does not deny that the battle is to the strong and the race to the swift; Isak does what no weaker man could have compassed, but Isak treads down no one on his way. On the contrary, his strength is the shelter under which the weaker can grow and flourish. He made the first path, but scores of people and hundreds of animals come to live in the wilderness through which he walked alone.
Competition with its fear and agony arises because people want to run faster than life. Peace and happiness are found in keeping pace with life. The modern business man is like the lightning which flashes here and there, "But lightning as lightning is sterile," says Geissler, the author's spokesman; and he speaks words of wisdom to young Sivert of Sellanraa: "Look at you Sellanraa people: every day you gaze at some blue mountains. They are not figments of the imagination, they are old mountains sunk deep in the past; and you have them for companions. You live here with heaven and earth and are one with them, you are one with all the broad and deeply-rooted things. You do not need a sword in your hands; you meet life bare-headed and bare-handed in the midst of a great friendliness. Look, there is nature, it belongs to you and to your people! Men and nature are not bombarding each other, they agree. They are not competing or running a race, they go together. In the midst of this you Sellanraa people exist. The mountains, the woods, the moors, the meadows, the heavens, and the stars—oh, nothing of this is poor and grudging, it is without measure. Listen to me, Sivert, be content! You have everything to live on, everything to live for, everything to believe in, you are born and produce, you are the necessary ones on earth. Not all are necessary on earth, but you are. You preserve life. From generation to generation you exist in nothing but fruitfulness, and when you die another generation carries it on. That is what is meant by life eternal."
THE WANDERER ARRIVED
Two tendencies war with each other in the temperament of the Norwegians. One has made them vikings, explorers, seafarers, and pioneers; the other has made them home-builders and tillers of the soil. One is restless, impatient of restraint, avid for new experiences and for ever-shifting forms of life; the other longs for the homeland, and seeks to strike roots deep in the spot of earth made sacred by the toil of the forefathers.
In Knut Hamsun both these tendencies are present and are accentuated by his double racial heritage, his birth in an old peasant family of Gudbrandsdalen and his upbringing among the lively, adventurous fisherfolk of Nordland. In his work, the two strains are evident, the former predominating in his earlier, the latter in his recent books. Glahn, the untamed hunter and nomad, is a true child of the author's spirit, but so is Isak, the farmer and home-builder. The common bond that unites them is that both are closely affiliated with nature, one as the passionate lyrical worshipper of Pan, the other as the humble servant of nature's fruitfulness.
In the personal life of the author the same divergent tendencies may be traced. He has been a wanderer on the face of the earth, a vagrant laborer in Norway, a pioneer in America, a visitor to the capitals of Europe, a traveller in the Orient. But deep inherited instincts have always drawn him homeward. He has sought a place where his own life could strike root. Since the year 1896 he has made his home in Norway, and ever since the financial returns of his early books made it possible, has lived on his own land and cultivated it. His first home was in Nordland, at Hamaröy in Salten. There he lived for many years, surrounded by the wild, majestic, yet ingratiating scenery which impressed him in boyhood and which he has so often pictured. In 1917 he removed to the south of Norway, and, after a short residence at Larvik on the Christianiafjord, chose his present home near Grimstad, the small seaport town where Ibsen spent his unhappy youth as an apothecary's apprentice. There he has bought the estate Nörholmen with a fine mansion several hundred years old.
Though Hamsun has lived as much as possible in the outskirts of human settlement and has always kept in retirement, denying himself to sightseers and above all to interviewers, the kindliness which breathes from his work and, in spite of his nervous shyness, emanates from his personality, has made him very much beloved in his own country. A very sympathetic picture of his home life is presented by the Norwegian newspaper writer, Thomas Vetlesen, who in the autumn of 1920 was admitted to Hamsun's home through the good offices of the government. As it is the only authentic account we have, I will quote here a portion of the article which appeared in the Norwegian press.
"After a half hour's drive (from Grimstad) we enter a lane of hazel nut bushes, bending over the road weighted by their full, heavy clusters of nuts. Soon we catch sight of Hamsun's white, two-story house at the end of a quiet bight of the sea, not far from the main road. The automobile swings into the large yard with a quick, accustomed motion, and stops in front of the kitchen steps. The noise has announced my arrival, and presently the yard is full of people. Fru Hamsun and the children receive the stranger and welcome him to their home. There is Tore and Arild and Elinor and the lovely little Cecilie—a pretty four-leaf clover at ages ranging from three to nine summers.
"Within the house the spacious rooms with their pleasant old-fashioned style of building breathe a spirit of hospitality. There is a garden room turning out toward the road, a dining-room, a wide hall with a staircase leading to the upper story and on the other side of it a series of smaller rooms.