Human Side Podcast 05: Knut Hamsun

Discussion of Knut Hamsun and a recently completed English translation of his book of poetry The Wild Chorus (Det vilde Kor). Drawing of Hamsun by his then 10 year old son Torre Hamsun.

Coming Soon

  Preview of THE WILD CHOIR audiobook, with music composed by JHD

"The Words of Svend Herlufsen" by Knut Hamsun

 my translation of "Svend Herlufsens Ord" from Det Vilde Kor, 1904

I
My beloved is like this I say

In the East Indies lives a predatory spider,
a creature the color of a red orchid.
In the middle of the day it lies about contorted,
with legs spread wide and belly up it lays there.
Motionless, the spider seems dead.

The butterfly knows nothing of the spider,
and down to the red orchid he flutters on a whim,
just a beautiful flower laying below him.
The butterfly will not fly back up from there.
Into the arms of death he flew.

The orchid will go on laying there, unmoving as before.
To it new butterflies will come and die, always more.
And after each the flower will again unmoving lay.

My beloved is like this I say.


II
Do you want to know

Do you want to know that love that only she can profess
and how hot your own fire will burn when awakened?
Then seize her and hold her to your wicked breast
— that is, if she allows herself to be taken.

Do you want to know how to keep her love for you
and how to stop her from ever leaving?
Then grip her by the arm, never let her out of view,
and with your whip give her a beating.


III
I have this

I have this: a single thought pursues me,
an odd pain pulsing in my forehead,
the coming breakdown of my sanity.
Through my veins a fiery waltz spreads
and beneath my feet the floor turns red —
The chimney is howling — the Devil howling with glee,
and the fire leaves a strange soot instead.

Dear God! I hurry to the room above,
I stand and look out for the moon there,
and I see only the face of a dove,
crouched and curled up without a care.
Together we two coo blindly as a pair.
With the fire dead came the darkness I've such fear of.
My heart was left red and rough and bare.

And it was a mighty love for her I did declare,
As my bride at my side she was a godsend.
But what happened ended our joyful affair:
In the dirt I now grovel, to her I attend,
Upon her I rely as upon God I depend,
all in vain . . . . . To Hell with this despair!
Will that howling in the chimney never end!


IV
See, the night is life

Listen to how it rumbles on a calm night!
Put an ear to the earth and hear it played:
an insistent sound, familiar yet slight,
a tone that does not fade.
But what is it? Maybe like fermenting wine its sound.
No. More a seething and dissolving and corroding underground
— Or upon the world a kind of scratching made.

What — is it for that silence of night you wait,
where the spring and life itself has its seat?
It comes as a quivering struggle boundless and great,
the animals appearing to meet and greet.
There in their chicanery, chiding and cheating
their testing, tormenting and entreating,
as eye to eye they mate in heat.

At midnight a wanderer makes his escape,
such is your blessed right.
A wound is a wound, and this but a scrape,
a minor change to your plight.
You patch yourself up with laments and prayers,
and drink yourself drunk with despair
— Only then do you feel contrite.

You come upon a procession you will forever remember —
for where are these creatures headed so fast?
To the observer, it is horses ridden along together,
in all their knowing honor stomping past.
— See, the night is life and it is ruled by women,
and men are but oxen over the earth driven
by that tone pulsing on to the last.

"In One Hundred Years All Is Forgotten" by Knut Hamsun

my translation of "Om Hundrede Aar Er Alting Glemt" from Det Vilde Kor, 1904

Tonight I'm adrift, conflicted, and in doubt,
I feel like a capsized boat,
and for all I suffer and moan about
I have found no antidote.
    But why should I feel so rotten?
    In one hundred years all is forgotten.

I sing songs and prance about in pride
and live my life as a beautiful novel.
Like a full-grown troll I eat at God's side
and drink like the Devil's apostle.
    But why act in ways so misbegotten?
    In one hundred years all is forgotten.

It is best to end this struggle without delay
and into the sea with my tormented soul I will head.
There the world will find me one day
by the bitterest of drownings dead.
    But why come to an end so ill-gotten?
    In one hundred years all is forgotten.

No, it is better to wander about and stay alive
and write a new book every year
and for the noblest lines continue to strive
until I die a writer of great revere.
    If that's all there is, where then do I begin:
    In one hundred years all is forgotten.

** Previously translated in free verse here 

"A Consideration" by Knut Hamsun

my translation of "Betragtning" from Det Vilde Kor, 1904

These Muslims should be shamed for their profane talk,
by we who here follow the Protestant or Catholic walk.
Their God they call Allah, their Bible the Quran,
a Devil they have too, but without any fans.

Our Christ learned from them they claim,
and in place of Christ their Muhammad came.
By that "hypocrite" and "viper" they in heaven are received.
Ha ha, in what nonsense these Muslims believe!

If they are to be saved there is just one way,
become sheep in Christ's flock, to them I say.
For what are your Mosques? Build churches instead.
A heathen receives no salvation when dead.

Will they learn anything from what I here argue for?
No. To these pagans we are "Christian dogs," nothing more.
That I believe not in the Quran they judge me brazen
to have a faith so blind as beyond all imagination.

But watch how God becomes angry. Persecution He does not tolerate.
Muhammad, the Quran and Allah himself He then sets straight.
And thereafter door to door through Muslim lands He goes
meting out upon them a boundless justice as only He knows.

This text at a Sunday sermon would find its place,
for Muslim heathendom is an unambiguous disgrace.
Still, God's patience is vast and allows for grace to grow,
though in death His mercy He can no longer bestow.

Oh, loving Creator, so what then is it all about?
Why allow some to live and die in a heathen faith devout?
Muhammad was, these people believe, God's greatest prophet;
perhaps as a limitation of nationality God accepts it.

For our sins He sacrificed His son, and He was a Jew,
and only by belief in Him do His descendants live on anew . . . . .
Yes, for so long as the world goes on His Word is greatest
and should by all of His true sheep be reaffirmed on a daily basis. 

Das Sausen Des Waldes

My German to English translation of Knut Hamsun's foreward to the 1909 German edition of Det Vilde Kor. The foreward is a letter from Hamsun to Dr. Heinrich Goebel, who wrote the book's introduction. Hamsun's original letter in Norwegian has been lost.

FOREWORD

My Dear Doctor!

The poems I have published make for only a small book, and perhaps they are not the best I've written, I do not know. Later, I will put out other collections, I have a great many verses. 

I do, however, find it disrespectful to my readers to publish early drafts and loose poetic sketches as finished poems.

Every poet knows that poems come about under a stronger or weaker pressure of mood. A sound buzzes in us, colors glow, there is the feeling of something inside trickling. It depends on how long this state of mind lasts. It has happened for me — in good moments — that before I have finished a verse the next one has begun to flow; I must then skip the half-finished verse, and begin with the new one further down on the page, and there is often only a single line here and there, which does not seem to follow the broader current. And why should I publish such a less than perfect draft? It would satisfy neither myself nor the readers.

So it is that I have a lot of poems that cannot be published until their form is improved.

I do not know how the great lyricists are working; their poems perhaps emerge completely finished and without mistakes at the instant a mood strikes them. I only wish to tell you, my dear Doctor, how my own verses have come about.

Incidentally, there is no major difference in my way of working with prose or poetry. A great part of what I wrote was penned at night after having slept a few hours and then awakening. I am at such moments clear-minded and extremely sensitive. I always have paper and a pencil beside my bed. I do not turn on the light, but begin to write in the dark when I feel something begin to flow. It has become a habit, and it is not difficult for me to understand my papers in the morning.

I do not wish to give you the impression of anything mystical in the development of my poems. That I am best writing in the dark at night is a sort of bad habit which began long ago when I had no light to turn on and was forced to make do. There is nothing mystical and nothing "ingenious" about it. The truly great poets probably have their own method, which is different from mine.

The summer is the most productive time for me. Many poems come about when I lie on my back in the forest. I try to get away from people and keep the memories of modern life far away, and I commit myself to those days of my childhood when I wandered about and cared for the animals at home. My feeling for nature — if such a thing is possible — came alive during that early childhood on the grasslands, in the woods, and in the mountains, and there I met the many animals and birds that have become my lifelong friends. Since the age of four the sea was also a part of the natural environment I grew up alongside. My home was on the Westfjord, and this fjord opens directly into the Atlantic Ocean.

Reports from the explorers on their explorations are my favorite reading. These people are not as skilled as professional poets with the adjectives they choose, yet they tell me so much. When I sometimes read descriptions of nature in modern novels, I am filled with disgust; I quickly see theirs is merely a somewhat learned knowledge of nature, influenced by some observation made on the spot, and not an inner and sacred empathy with the forest and its vastness.

Winter is for me the hardest time. I do not love the snow, its sight torments me, and I understand nothing but its deep and unnatural emptiness. I once wrote a long epic poem about winter during Christmas. But, sadly, it was not a success, although it was illustrated by one of our foremost artists.

If something happens in winter that reminds me of the summer, I always feel happiness and contentment. Rain falling upon the snow as a change in the weather, the chirping of a little bird in a tree, or the passing scent of a flower blossom, each put me under a spell for awhile; sometimes, when a fly buzzes in the window, a pang of joy passes through me in memory of the summer, now hidden beneath the snow.

Spring begins to take hold of me in February or March. The days are then clear again, one is given new hope, and the verses begin to come.

So many more poems are there ready and waiting to be finished.

This is, Doctor, what I can tell you about my poetry. Use these remarks as you wish, whether your plan is to translate them, or just to quote from the useful parts when you write your introduction.

Sincerely,
KNUT HAMSUN

"With Red Roses" by Knut Hamsun

 my translation of "Med Røde Roser" from Det Vilde Kor, 1904

With hands outstretched I am knelt
despite having heard your nay.
Take these flowers with gratitude felt
for with them you adorned my way.
I behold you now like these roses aflame
though my eyes you refuse to meet;
perchance many memories have came
some of sorrow and some sweet.

Your tears like rain left my mind in a haze
your smile was my sun anon,
you created upon the earth beauty with your ways,
and my soul in your garden lives on.
It flowers — it flowers in that garden today
and with a fragrant plea.
O come, and cast all your sorrow away,
and keep my love only!

"The Skerry" by Knut Hamsun

my translation of "Skærgaardsø" from Det Vilde Kor, 1904

The boat drifts now
towards a skerry,
an isle in the sea
its shores luxuriant.
Flowers grow there
never before seen,
they stand like strangers
and watch my landing.

My heart is more and more
like a mythic garden
with flowers like these
on the island.
They talk with one another
and whisper strangely,
like children meeting
with laughter and curtsies.

Perhaps I was here
at the dawn of time
as a white Spiraea
waiting to be found.
That fragrance I know
from long ago,
I tremble amidst
my memory of it.

I close my eyes,
the recollection passes
my head falls
towards my shoulder.
The night is thickening
over the island,
the sea is thundering —
Nirvana's thunder.

"My Grave" by Knut Hamsun

my translation of "Gravsted" from Det Vilde Kor, 1904

No, dear God, do not let me be deceased
under blankets and sheets
and at my bedside all that crying.
Let me be struck down one day unexpected
and fall in the forest someplace neglected,
where no one can find me will I lay dying.

As a son of the forest who knows it well,
it will not deny my humble request to dwell
at long last upon some mossy mound.
There will I give back to all its animals thus,
my great corpse without speeches or fuss,
and by the crows, the rats and flies so found.

Yes, I will host a grand meal when I am deceased
for those beaks and claws and teeth a feast,
for one and all a generous serving.
And from above a squirrel will look on askance
watching with eyes alert from his branch,
almost human eyes, so unnerving.

An ample portion for each to feed,
enough to satisfy an army in need
and at the table they pick me apart.
An eagle to strip my bones bare,
staying until no more is there,
and then with talons drawn in depart.

And into late evening and all night long
the glorious sounds of a corpse in song
as lovely as when bells are rung.
Then in tribute to me a final word,
from the owl herself it is heard,
hooted as a simple oath is sung.

When the little left of me the earth receives
and at dawn is hidden under a grave of leaves,
the end of this joyous night will be near.
My friends! I have fed you all! Goodbye!
— But all these leaves about me, why?
It must be the wind that swept them here.

Blood

It is old, the blood. To translate these words of Norwegian Bokmål into English is a sort of memory. My lineage is Swedish, not Norwegian, but its all the same. These are shared words of Northern Men, Norsemen. I am a Norseman, or I should be. Because I am a Norseman only in instinct. That I long for herring or the sardines of King Oscar, or that I fish on the frozen lakes; that the cold is indifferent to me-- I cannot ignore it. 

These globalists and their cabal have drawn me into their economies around the world. I have traveled widely, it seems at their behest, to unwittingly spread their gospel. I have been a willing lieutenant in their command. I speak French and Spanish now, I speak a bit of Hungarian and Bulgarian. I know global finance. I understand the in-s and out-s of their project, and how I can benefit from it economically. 

But its all bollocks. 

I am at peace when fishing on a frozen lake. My blood needs only this. It is all my blood ever needed. My grandfather Nils tried to return the family to that place, to a lake in central Wisconsin, a lake his own father Hans, a Swede by birth, had chosen and fished upon and intended to make his final home. 

My grandfather came there after years and years in American cities, from New York to San Francisco, to at last show his sons that this was where they should settle. But it didn't work out. I know his plans. I have my grandfather's books. I have his writing. I spoke often with my grandfather when I came up to WI for the winter fishing. I know what he hoped for.

The land cannot be owned, finally. A man will die and his land will be translated into the new generations. The sons of my grandfather, of course, did not see it as he did. My father, the best of them, has preserved what he could preserve. But land cannot live in preservation. Land can only live outside what the humans would foist upon it. For it is not life otherwise. 

So I translate Hamsun. 

I remember. 

It is a long memory. Swen in Hulu, yes, a man of my lineage from the 17th century, identified by my grandfather Nils. 

I don't know what else there is. I must return to what is oldest. The global agenda is wrong. It doesn't fit with my blood. Do not turn the world a tawny shade of brown and atheist. Do not turn the world into a mediocre class of english speaking wage slaves. Do not let the last languages, the last pagans of the North, disappear.

"In One Hundred Years Everything Is Forgotten" by Knut Hamsun

my translation of "Om Hundrede Aar Er Alting Glemt" from Det Vilde Kor, 1904

Tonight I'm drifting, brooding and conflicted,
I feel like a capsized boat,
and for all I moan about and all I suffer
I see no resolution.
    But why should I be so deeply troubled?    
    In one hundred years everything is forgotten.

Yes, I prance about and sing songs
and live my life like a beautiful novel.
I eat at God's side like a full-grown troll
and drink like the devil himself.
    But why should I continue on with this buffoonery?
    In one hundred years everything is forgotten.

Better to put an end to this struggle
by walking into the sea with my tormented soul.
There the world will find me one day
dead by bitter drowning.
    But why should I come to such a bad end?
    In one hundred years everything is forgotten.

Oh no, it's better to wander and to live
and write a book for every year to come
and to soar at last on the noblest of lines
and die as a master of the novel.
    Since there is only this, I lose all hope:
    In one hundred years everything is forgotten.

This poem set to music by the Norwegian band Lumsk

"Fever Poem" by Knut Hamsun

my translation of "Feberdigte" from Det Vilde Kor, 1904

I
I find myself rushing,
to the crossroads of everything I am led,
of her, of earth and God.
To herself she opened the door,
A farewell then said, –
she was gone, nothing more.

II
Now autumn comes over the Lord's land,
days sunless, oppressive, black,
Life gives and takes back,
everything comes to naught in the chorus of the damned.
    But man lives so long.

Now gathered at the house and in the barn heaped
The grasses and grains are cut, the harvest resumed,
The leaves fall, everything is consumed,
by death's roar overwhelmed in defeat.
    But man lives so long.

III
May God punish you, Alvilde,
my passion you snuffed out,
your word you took back,
and so cruelly led me about.
Once more the road for me is long,
without sun and without song.
May God punish you, Alvilde.

May God uplift you, Alvilde,
Giving thanks for our time.
You called me your boy,
so many names you made mine.
Your hand and mouth you offered me,
for a moment you and I would together be.
May God uplift you, Alvilde.

IV
Listen here, what is this silent dread
now slipping into my senses unsaid,
that through the whites of my eyes does sneer,
that leaves my mouth pale and contorted in this way?
At the wellspring of fate, is that where I drunkenly lay?
O God, inside me such a world of madness and fear.

V
For some time I sit and don't know what to say:
The grain is cut and the leaves fall, but why is it thus?
Why does the life of summer disintegrate into dust?
Why does grass grow if it is only to decay?
I go on thinking in this way.

Grain exists so that man's hunger is allayed
and grass turns green so that it may wither to hay.
And the leaves of the grove from the hot sun provide shade.
But why should I scatter seeds of joy, I say,
If in the end I am only to pass away?

I cried out and demanded of the foaming sea;
to the forests and mountains and rushes near,
to the stones and storms and vast heavens I made my plea,
and to anything able to hear:
Why was I born into this life here?

But the heavens and storms and stones said nothing to me.

VI
Alvilde, I remember that last night,
    You shouted: Kneel!
    I drank from your shoe
    Everyone laughed, even you.
I did it just for the pleasure you would feel.

Alvilde, then you held out a flower.
    But I continued out.
    The look you gave me
    stung pleasantly.
I went homeward in the darkness, stumbling about.

VII
Now the autumnal wind is howling
    like a rain soaked hound against my windows,
a chill trickles through my veins
    colder than the wind outside blows.
There is released within me
    the stench of a poisonous flower in bloom,
and the odor moves like a breath
    lingering on in my nostrils.
It sprouts from the garden of hatred.

It is boiling, it is boiling. I try
    in vain to fall asleep,
I hear the flag line's neverending
    banging against the pole,
the creaking of doors, a sneaking about
    on tiptoe, there are footsteps in the hall,
my heart suddenly pounds
    like the baying a of hell hound.
It is boiling, boiling, boiling.

VIII
Alvilde, get my cloak and my cap with the feather on top,
I have decided to go out on a ride.
Hold the stirrups steady, slave, while I climb atop
and then run on foot at my side.

I go to seek out and examine these winds so strong
that blow over the mountains wide,
it is me on horseback, it is me galloping along
and you running like a dog at my side.

Hey now, keep the pace, I tell you I am in a rush,
Riding on a tour of my kingdom this day.
Then you collapse, Alvilde, so I bind you tightly thus --
Dear God, the girl will die if I ride on in this way.

IX
It is boiling, it is boiling, this weather and wind.
Then a knocking I hear, but from where?
Come in!
But outside the door no one is there.

I see the first day of creation,
the smoking newborn world,
I myself am alive.
Appearing at the Earth's outermost limit,
and from the clouds looking down over all that was created,
an expressionless face . . . . .
I ask when in my life did I lay in darkness?
Onward, my blood horse, I ride as on an anvil,
I am made of red bricks, red as blood,
I have eaten the yellow lining of my hat.
Say, isn't that a knocking at the door?

That fog I see, is it the land of the dead?
There is a lifeless sea out there
and in the middle of the sea an island born blind:
it is the land of the dead.
I come, I spread out my arms
and sink with you evermore .  .  .  .  .

X
So many days have now gone by, and the days they quickly pass.
    My soul is cold and tough and remade
    with the spring the autumn gale did fade.
I no longer complain, to everything I nod silently and smile to the last.

Why should sorrow be allowed to rumble down the hills like boulders,
    stopping a wayfaring soul from moving on?
    With this defiant heel I stomp upon
that sorrow I have no place for on my good, old shoulders.

I wander into the woods, a ruler without lands or people,
    an elevated spirit, a bent man,
    a fallen foot, a clenched hand,
and with my sword salute myself as my conqueror's equal.

But late at night I sit and hear the scythes being honed
    and footsteps upon the earth are near.
    In the faraway clouds a face does appear.
From the wasteland an organ thunders and a last, long mass is intoned.

Philosophy and the City

¨And love became the world's origin and the world's ruler, yet littered is its path with flowers and blood, flowers and blood.¨ – Victoria, Knut Hamsun (1898)

 

20. Before the advent of farming--and the trade and roads and cities and conquest that grew from it--men could not have spoken with any certainty of the many faceless others beyond the lands of their families and small communities. As trade and technology and government brought larger groups of men together anonymously, it became fashionable to speak of society, of culture and civilization, and later economy and nature, vast and mysterious concepts that men defined in each their own way and only sometimes were in agreement upon.

 

23. The family farm is but the first step to the city.

 

24. The city teaches man to think in abstraction, to consider his multitude of anonymous neighbors, to speak generally. The city teaches man to think of ideas de-personalized, nameless and faceless. The city provides him with a new vocabularly: of crowds, of groups, anonymous forces both economic and social, of causes and effects at what he calls the  ¨macro level,¨ of mathematical equations that must only be adjusted to achieve some better, more just equilibrium for his fellow man. Man´s new vocabulary brings into being new, previously unaccounted for phenomena. The city beckons man to apply his Reason to it. The city appears to man as imminently rational and transformable.

25. What can be named can be mastered, for naming is itself a mastery. New names encourage man to attempt a wholescale transformation of the city.

30. As the city is extended, the dwelling places of mystery are uprooted and abolished. The undomesticated earth, the dwelling place of animals and gods and sky, is pushed further to the earth´s edges. Having never been beyond the frontier philosophy can only speak of what it can transform in men and by way of men, of the great urban forces that direct them. Philosophy can only speak in the language of  the city. For the history of philosophy is a history of city life.

33. Descartes was only possible because of the city. Without a city to break apart the world into forces and phenomena, to make a man an individual, to make him anonymous, to separate him from other men while living next door to them, listening to them move about the apartments above and below him as he lays in bed; to make a man withdraw into himself, a disconnected individual subject to forces beyond him, but still comprehendable by his Reason: this is what Descartes learned from the city and constructed a metaphysics upon.

36. The Cartesian Error is always most attractive to the city dweller. The city is Reason made manifest, where man can dwell alone among his concepts.

47. The city is the dis-unity of man and woman. Where once there was family, love and flowers, there is loneliness, economic activity, and blood.

55. The city-born philosophy is never more than a repository for the anxieties of urban life, the city-born philosopher no more than a glorified urban planner. Verily, Plato´s Republic, the first acknowledged great work of philosophy, is above all a template for urban planning and social organization.

67. But if philosophy should not aspire to urban planning it should neither aspire to a kind of gardening, or cultivation of the living. Rather philosophy should be remade as subsistence hunting. It should no longer be grain and dairy fed, but sustained entirely on the wild protein it has hunted from the untamed forests.

70. If philosophy ended its preoccupation with the re-ordering of the world it might begin an other, more proper task. But for this proper task to present itself philosophy must break entirely with the city, to see how or even if it can survive where farms and cities were never possible. It shall be taken to that place to die, or to find itself transformed. But who are those men capable of taking philosophy there?

Miracles

“But was the spirit of the soil his friend? The plant that is cut down one year, yet grows again the next — did this miracle make him religious and silent? The stones, and the heather, and the branches of trees, and the grass, and the woods, and the wind, and the great heaven of all the universe — were these his friends?”—Hamsun, Look Back on Happiness

“But what then does it mean to be aware of the world as a miracle at some times and not at others?” —Wittgenstein, Lecture on Ethics

50. Man lives in denial of so many miracles. That the plant that sustains him grows again after he has harvested from it. That the world exists. Instead he turns these miracles into facts, items for textbooks and academic journals; facts to be assembled into theories. The facts of science deny the world its miracle and thereby remove man’s responsibility to it. The plant becomes a resource and not a mysterious gift. The plant becomes a source of income, a way to place himself higher in the economic typology of men.

51. That man should feel religiously about the world is the most important fact of all. It is the fact that destroys all other facts. It is the fact for which there is no science. But for science to exist it is the first fact that must ignored.

59. The gods required man to remark upon the miraculous, to be in awe of it. Without man there is no one to admire the miracle, to give thanks, and to make great art to celebrate it. Without man the gods are lonely. That men are bound to the world is a miracle, and it is only through the gods that they are so bound.

65. Science removes man from the world. Science destroys its miracle. And science is never silent: it is always boasting of what it has explained and will explain. Through science man divests himself of responsibility for the world, for man’s responsibility for the world is itself miraculous.