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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Ah, but once he got a hold on her and used it—that was when she tried to steal his money from him. Not that Isak was a miser in that way, but the money was clearly his. Ho, it was nearly being ruin and disaster for her that time! But even then it was not exactly thoroughgoing, out-and-out wickedness on Inger’s part; she wanted the money for Eleseus—for her blessed boy Eleseus in town, who was asking for his Daler again. Was he to go there among all the fine folk and with empty pockets? After all, she had a mother’s heart. She asked his father for the money first, and, finding it was no good, had taken it herself. Whether Isak had had some suspicion beforehand, or had found it out by accident—anyhow, it was found out. And suddenly Inger found herself gripped by both arms, felt herself lifted from the floor, and thumped down on to the floor again. It was something strange and terrible—a sort of avalanche. Isak’s hands were not weak, not worn out now. Inger gave a groan, her head fell back, she shivered, and gave up the money.
Even then Isak said little, though Inger made no attempt to hinder him from speaking. What he did say was uttered, as it were, in one hard breath: “Huttch! You—you’re not fit to have in the place!”
She hardly knew him again. Oh, but it must have been long-stored bitterness that would not be repressed.
A miserable day, and a long night, and a day beyond. Isak went out of the house and lay outside, for all that there was hay to be got in; Sivert was with his father. Inger had little Leopoldine and the animals to keep her company; but lonely she was for all that, crying nearly all the time and shaking her head at herself. Only once in all her life before had she felt so moved, and this day called it to mind; it was when she had lain in her bed and throttled a newborn child.
Where were Isak and his son? They had not been idle; no, they had stolen a day and a night or thereabouts from the haymaking, and had built a boat up on the lake. Oh, a rough and poor-looking vessel enough, but strong and sound as their work had always been; they had a boat now, and could go fishing with nets.
When they came home the hay was dry as ever. They had cheated providence by trusting it, and suffered no loss; they had gained by it. And then Sivert flung out an arm, and said: “Ho! Mother’s been haymaking!” Isak looked down over the fields and said “H’m.” Isak had noticed already that some of the hay had been shifted; Inger ought to be home now for her midday meal. It was well done indeed of her to get in the hay, after he had scolded her the day before and said “Huttch!” And it was no light hay to move; she must have worked hard, and all the cows and goats to milk besides. … “Go in and get something to eat,” he said to Sivert.
“Aren’t you coming, then?”
“No.”
A little while after, Inger came out and stood humbly on the door-slab and said:
“If you’d think of yourself a little—and come in and have a bite to eat.”
Isak grumbled at that and said “H’m.” But it was so strange a thing of late for Inger to be humble in any way, that his stubbornness was shaken.
“If you could manage to set a couple of teeth in my rake, I could get on again with the hay,” said she. Ay, she came to her husband, the master of the place, to ask for something, and was grateful that he did not turn scornfully away.
“You’ve worked enough,” said he, “raking and carting and all.”
“No, ’tis not enough.”
“I’ve no time, anyway, to mend rakes now. You can see there’s rain coming soon.”
And Isak went off to his work.
It was all meant to save her, no doubt; for the couple of minutes it would have taken to mend the rake would have been more than tenfold repaid by letting Inger work on. Anyhow, Inger came out with her rake as it was, and fell to haymaking with a will; Sivert came up with the horse and haycart, and all went at it, sweating at the work, and the hay was got in. It was a good stroke of work, and Isak fell to thinking once more of the powers above that guide all our ways—from stealing a Daler to getting a crop of hay. Moreover, there lay the boat; after half a generation of thinking it over, the boat was finished; it was there, up on the lake.
“Eyah, Herregud!” said Isak.
XVIt was a strange evening altogether: a turning-point. Inger had been running off the line for a long time now; and one lift up from the floor had set her in her place again. Neither spoke of what had happened. Isak had felt ashamed of himself after—all for the sake of a Daler, a trifle of money, that he would have had to give her after all, because he himself would gladly have let the boy have it. And then again—was not the money as much Inger’s as his own? There came a time when Isak found it his turn to be humble.
There came many sorts of times. Inger must have changed her mind again, it seemed; once more she was different, gradually forgetting her fine ways and turning earnest anew: a settler’s wife, earnest and thoughtful as she had been before. To think that a man’s hard grip could work such wonders! But it was right; here was a strong and healthy woman, sensible enough, but spoiled and warped by long confinement in an
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