Oppkomlinger fra fattige familier tjente godt nok på handel til å kjøpe opp eiendom fra godseiere, husmannssønner ble prester og selv fattigfolk fikk gardiner og hvitt mel. "After all, what is happiness? One must learn to recognize its unimportance." (216)īoken er en humoristisk skrevet skildring av en periode der samfunnet gjennomgikk store forandringer. But if, like me, you are set to read everything that Hamsun wrote, these editions are nonetheless invaluable. Sure, there are numerous mistakes in the text and the translation could definitely be improved upon. I should say that I'm so glad that Tough Poets Press decided to (re)print both Children of the Age and the related Segelfoss Town (1915)-otherwise, these novels would not be available to English readers. It's a novel worth reading in its own right. Children is more explicitly focused than Growth on the relation between the landed gentry-the aristocracy-and the upcoming merchant classes. The themes partly overlap: a critique of modernity people's relationship with the land/nature fate and (un)happiness the difficulties and rewards of love and friendship the mysterious, fundamentally opaque forces that move us and constitute our human psychology. "A man should have it in him to be a little greater than his fate." (135) Children of the Age (1913) can be read as a kind of prelude to Hamsun's magnum opus-published four years later- Growth of the Soil (1917).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |