Pykk has read far more Hamsun books than I have, so he is able to move the story along into his later writing. My experience has been that people who search for meaning usually find it somewhere. This is the one place where I truly identified with Nagel. “You mentioned Ibsen,” Nagel continued, in the same state of agitation, though no one had mentioned the name. Less satisfying for many people, at least, including Knut Hamsun who pushed his characters to extremes of behavior and irrationality to challenge, however futilely, the rational forces that were destroying something essential around them. Religious belief, shaken by all of the social and scientific changes of the time, wither had to be rebuilt (Dostoevsky’s solution) or replaced with a less satisfying alternative – science or philosophy or art. Séamus puts the novel in the tradition of the crisis of faith that was engaging so many writers at the end of the 19th century and would scoop up countless more. And about how the Midget works as an alternative Christ figure to the crazy protagonist Nagel. The deliberate link of the two main women in the novel, Dagny and Martha, with Mary (Magdalena) and Martha – Séamus has completely convinced me about that. I was surprised, this time though, how much religious language there was in Hunger, and there is far more in Mysteries.

The religious mysteries, mostly Christian, perhaps something else. It’s in Chapter 13 of Knut Hamsun’s Mysteries.Īt Vapour Trails, Séamus has written about the mysteries of Mysteries.

Mysteries by knut hamsun