MOTHWISE
Original Title: “Sværmere.”
Translated from the Norwegian by W. Worster, M.A.
MOTHWISE
BY
KNUT HAMSUN
AUTHOR OF “GROWTH OF THE SOIL” “PAN” ETC. ETC.
GYLDENDAL
11 BURLEIGH STREET, COVENT GARDEN
LONDON, W.C.2
COPENHAGEN. CHRISTIANIA.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The publication of Growth of the Soilin the spring of last year (1920) setcritics and readers asking for informationabout the author and his works.Later in the year further interest was arousedby the news that Hamsun had been awardedthe Nobel Prize for literature. In December,an article on Hamsun, giving a brief generalsurvey of his works, appeared in The FortnightlyReview. This article, with someslight alteration, is now reprinted here, theproprietors of that journal having very kindlygranted their permission, an act of courtesywhich is the more to be appreciated consideringthe brief time which has elapsedsince the original publication.
Knut Hamsun is now sixty. For yearspast he has been regarded as the greatestof living Norwegian writers, and one or twoattempts have been made previously tointroduce his work into this country, but itwas not until this year (1920), with the[viii]publication of Growth of the Soil, that heachieved any real success, or became at allgenerally known, among English readers.
Growth of the Soil is very far indeed fromHamsun’s earliest beginnings: far even fromthe books of his early middle period, whichmade his name. It is the life story of a manin the wilds, the genesis and gradual developmentof a homestead, the unit of humanity,in the untilled, uncleared tracts that stillremain in the Norwegian Highlands. It isan epic of earth; the history of a microcosm.Its dominant note is one of patient strengthand simplicity; the mainstay of its workingis the tacit, stern, yet loving alliance betweenNature and the Man who faces her himself,trusting to himself and her for the physicalmeans of life, and the spiritual contentmentwith life which she must grant if he beworthy. Modern man faces Nature onlyby proxy, or as proxy, through others or forothers, and the intimacy is lost. In thewilds the contact is direct and immediate;it is the foothold upon earth, the touch ofthe soil itself, that