Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun (chromebook ebook reader txt) 📕
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Growth of the Soil was published in 1917 to universal acclaim. A mid- to late-career work for Hamsun, it was celebrated for its then-revolutionary use of literary techniques like stream of consciousness, and for its unadorned depiction of pastoral life. Its focus on the quotidian lives of everyday people has led scholars to classify it as a novel of Norwegian New Realism.
Isak, a man so strong and so simple that he echoes a primitive, foundational “everyman,” finds an empty plot of land in turn-of-the-century Norway, and builds a small home. He soon attracts a wife, Inger, whose harelip has led her to be ostracized from town life but who is nonetheless a hard and conscientious worker. Together the two earthy beings build a farm and a family, and watch as society and civilization grows and develops around them.
Isak and Inger’s toils sometimes bring them up against the burgeoning modernity around them, but curiously, the novel is not one driven by a traditional conflict-oriented plot. Instead, the steady progression of life on the farm, with its ups and downs, its trials and joys, makes the people and their growth the novel’s main propellant. While the humble, homespun protagonists occasionally come into conflict with the awe-inspiring forces of civilization, more often than not, those forces are portrayed as positive and symbiotic companions to the agrarian lifestyle.
Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920 for Growth of the Soil, one of the rare instances in which the Nobel committee awarded a prize for a specific novel, and not a body of work. It has since come to be regarded as a classic of modernist, and Norwegian, literature.
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- Author: Knut Hamsun
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He knew how to waste his time idling, did Brede. He came by Sellanraa one day, going up to the hills—simply to look for precious metals. He came back the same evening; had not found anything definite, he said, but certain signs—and he nodded. He would come up again soon, and go over the hills thoroughly, over towards Sweden.
And sure enough, Brede came up again. He had taken a fancy to the work, no doubt; but he called it telegraph business this time—must go up and look over the whole of the line. Meanwhile his wife and children at home looked after the farm, or left it to look after itself. Isak was sick and tired of Brede’s visits, and went out of the room when he came; then Inger and Brede would sit talking heartily together. What could they have to talk about? Brede often went down to the village, and had always some news to tell of the great folk there; Inger, on the other hand, could always draw upon her famous journey to Trondhjem and her stay there. She had grown talkative in the years she had been away, and was always ready to gossip with anyone. No, she was no longer the same straightforward, simple Inger of the old days.
Girls and women came up continually to Sellanraa to have a piece of work cut out, or a long hem put through the machine in a moment, and Inger entertained them well. Oline too came again, couldn’t help it, belike; came both spring and autumn; fair-spoken, soft as butter, and thoroughly false. “Just looked along to see how things are with you,” she said each time. “And I’ve been longing so for a sight of the lads, I’m that fond of them, the little angels they were. Ay, they’re big fellows now, but it’s strange … I can’t forget the time when they were small and I had them in my care. And here’s you building and building again, and making a whole town of the place. Going to have a bell to ring, maybe, at the roof of the barn, same as at the parsonage?”
Once Oline came and brought another woman with her, and the pair of them and Inger had a nice day together. The more Inger had sitting round her, the better she worked at her sewing and cutting out, making a show of it, waving her scissors and swinging the iron. It reminded her of the place where she had learned it all—there was always many of them in the workrooms there. Inger made no secret of where she had got her knowledge and all her art from; it was from Trondhjem. It almost appeared as if she had not been in prison at all, in the ordinary way, but at school, in an institute, where one could learn to sew and weave and write, and do dressing and dyeing—all that she had learned in Trondhjem. She spoke of the place as of a home; there were so many people she knew there, superintendents and forewomen and attendants, it had been dull and empty to come back here again, and hard to find herself altogether cut off from the life and society she had been accustomed to. She even made some show of having a cold—couldn’t stand the keen air there; for years after her return she had been too poorly to work out of doors in all seasons. It was for the outside work she really ought to have a servant.
“Ay, Heaven save us,” said Oline, “and why shouldn’t you have a servant indeed, when you’ve means and learning and a great fine house and all!”
It was pleasant to meet with sympathy, and Inger did not deny it. She worked away at her machine till the place shook, and the ring on her finger shone.
“There, you can see for yourself,” said Oline to the woman with her. “It’s true what I said, Inger she wears a gold ring on her finger.”
“Would you like to see it?” asked Inger, taking it off.
Oline seemed still to have her doubts; she turned it in her fingers as a monkey with a nut, looked at the mark. “Ay, ’tis as I say; Inger with all her means and riches.”
The other woman took the ring with veneration, and smiled humbly. “You can put it on for a bit if you like,” said Inger. “Don’t be afraid, it won’t break.”
And Inger was amiable and kind. She told them about the cathedral at Trondhjem, and began like this: “You haven’t seen the cathedral at Trondhjem, maybe? No, you haven’t been there!” And it might have been her own cathedral, from the way she praised it, boasted of it, told them height and breadth; it was a marvel! Seven priests could stand there preaching all at once and never hear one another. “And then I suppose you’ve never seen St. Olaf’s Well? Right in the middle of the cathedral itself, it is, on one side, and it’s a bottomless well. When we went there, we took each a little stone with us, and dropped it in, but it never reached the bottom.”
“Never reached the bottom?” whispered the two women, shaking their heads.
“And there’s a thousand other things besides in that cathedral,” exclaimed Inger delightedly. “There’s the silver chest to begin with. It’s Holy St. Olaf his own silver chest that he had. But the Marble Church—that was a little church all of pure marble—the Danes took that from us in the war. …”
It was time for the women to go. Oline took Inger aside, led her out into the larder where she knew all the cheeses were stored, and closed the door. “What is it?” asked Inger.
Oline whispered: “Os-Anders, he doesn’t dare come here any more. I’ve told him.”
“Ho!” said Inger.
“I told him if he only dared, after what
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