‘I have not analysed myself in any other way than by creating in my books hundreds of characters – each one spun out of myself – with the advantages and disadvantages of all imaginary persons. The so-called naturalistic period, Emile Zola and his contemporaries, wrote about people with so-called main characteristics. They had no use for the nuances of psychology, their persons had a ‘dominating quality which determined their character. Dostoevsky and others taught us something else about human beings. From my earliest writings I don’t think there exists in my entire production any person with such a straight dominating quality. They are all without so-called ‘character’, they are split and divided, they are not good or bad but both. They consist of many parts, there are nuances, they change in mind and actions.
‘And that is the way I am myself, without a doubt. It is quite possible that I am aggressive. I may have some of the characteristics hinted at by the professor – vulnerable, suspicious, egotistical, generous, jealous, judicious, sensitive, cold – all these qualities would be human. But I don’t know that I could give any of them supremacy in my nature. Whatever I consist of, whatever I am, came to me as a gift of grace which has made it possible for me to write my books. It is a gift I cannot analyse, Georg Brandes called it the divine folly.’

It is more than thirty years since I first read Knut Hamsun’s Pan. I had few memories of it, though I remembered the language, the poetry, and the mystery surrounding Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, the central character.

Glahn is a Pan-like man. He has rented a shack up in the woods in the far north of Norway where he lives by hunting and fishing. He has a dog, but otherwise lives alone, communing with trees and the sea, telling the time of day by the sun and bird-song, feeling the closeness of God around him. The opening pages show us Glahn’s absolute association of nature with divinity and there is an expectation of the tale becoming a kind of pastoral romance.

Hamsun said, “My new book will be beautiful; it takes place in Nordland, a quiet and red love story. There will be no polemics in it, just people under different skies.”

Into Glahn’s world, and attracted by his charisma and his ‘animal look’, come two women; the passionate teenager, Edvarda, who is stimulated almost entirely by the chase; and simple, tragic Eva, the wife of the local blacksmith.

Hamsun gives us a kind of Pan, a character who is half man, half goat; someone who can easily live alone and survive in nature, but who is completely incapable of life in the social realm. The novel is accomplished, astoundingly, by the subtle use of lyrical language and attention to what Hamsun described as the life of the mind.

This second visit to Hamsun’s novel showed me a picture of masculinity that I had not identified in my first reading. And although it may well contain elements of truth, the picture is a disturbing one and has left me with more questions than conclusions.

Nevertheless, Pan is a great novel, beautifully written and executed, and worth the time of anyone who appreciates good literature.

‘Hamsun has the qualities that belong to the very great, the completest omniscience about human nature.’ Rebecca West.

Norway was great, met up with lots of friends, drank and ate too much, swam in the gulf stream, sat through a massive storm, the usual stuff.

Good to be back, though.

The young man, though he was some years older than herself, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two years old, was familiar and sparked a series of tiny memories. Blond hair and a whisper of whiskers on his chin and his top lip. He had dismounted from his trap and was trying to calm the fjordling, stroking her two-tone mane and whispering sweet-nothings into her ear. At the same time he was stretching out his other hand to Solveig, Thea’s pale and frail mother, sitting in her chair in the sun.

When Thea came into his line of vision he was fully stretched like a picture of Golgotha, one hand on the beast, the other touching the fingers of the invalid, but his features broadened as he presented Thea with a smile and she saw that though he was only familiar to her, she was fully recognised by him.

‘I hope this isn’t inconvenient,’ he said. ‘I’m staying in the area, and I thought . . .’

And there he was, in his voice. It had been some years since she had seen him, perhaps four years, and then only briefly. She would have been twelve or thirteen at the time. But before that, when she was a little girl, the relations between their two fathers had been more active, and they had been regularly together during the months of summer. Though he was, no doubt, fully grown, the boy remained in his voice and on his smiling lips.

Solveig got to her feet and would have taken a step towards him, but Thea managed to get to her and settle her back down again. ‘Look, mother,’ she said, “We have a visitor come to see you. You remember Kristian Olsen from Engelsvik.’

‘Ole?’ she asked. ‘Is it really Ole?’

‘It’s Ole’s son, mother. Kristian, all grown tall and handsome.’

‘Ah,’ Solveig said. Kristian? Really?’

‘My father sends his regards,’ Kristian said. ‘He often speaks of you and your husband.’ While he spoke he unhitched the fjordling from the trap and let her wander around a grove of trees on the far side of the track. ‘She’ll be quiet now,’ he said, gazing for a moment through the branches towards the sea. ‘Though I should give her some water.’ He manhandled the two-wheel trap up against the fence and turned to give his hand to Thea. ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said. ‘Too long. Though I’ve thought of you.’

‘And I you,’ she said. ‘When I think on happy times. You have changed, though, grown taller than I remember.’

‘And you have changed,’ he said. ‘For the better. In my mind you were still a child in braids.’

Thea felt herself flush, for it was not her braids to which he referred, except by name. ‘I’ll find a bucket for the fjordling,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll catch up. Mother will entertain you.’

She collected a bucket from a shelf in the barn and took it around to the water butt for the horse. She realised it was the fulfillment of a promise, Kristian Olsen arriving on their doorstep just now. A month earlier her aunt had told her that the young men would come around once she started bleeding. And it had happened exactly as the old woman said. Ten days ago she had bled for the first time, though only for a day and a night. Hardly bled at all in fact, not what she had been led to expect. But two days after the little bleed a much bigger one had come, thick black curds had slowed her down in her daily tasks and, especially in the mornings, they had been accompanied by a dolour and a dullness which invited her to see the world as nothing more than a graveyard.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, only yesterday, the bleeding stopped. It ceased and the world began anew. And today the first young man was already arrived, summoned by a happening of which he could have no knowledge.

. . . . . . . . . . to be continued

It strikes me as a brave thing to say because it reveals certain vulnerabilities. It tells whoever is listening that she is alone, that she has a child to care for and that she has been abandoned by her partner or has chosen to live without him for whatever reason.

And we can also speculate some on the priority she gives to the areas in which they still maintain a common interest. The child comes first, followed by the dog and car in that order.

She and her partner may be able to communicate and co-operate quite well over the child, both being happy to contribute materially and emotionally to her well-being and development while willing to step back from continuous involvement from time to time and let the other take control and responsibility.

This being a fictional narrative, however, we are not required to stick closely to the truth, and should our purpose require we could remove that degree of rational co-operation from the woman with the smile and leave her an unconscious urge to punish her ex-partner, using their daughter as a stick with which to beat him. When she tells us she shares these things with her ex, she may not be truthful. For all we know she may sabotage the car, starve the dog and poison the mind of the bairn.

. . . . . . . . . . to be continued

Unedited?

A short novel for the internet.

Although, with a nod in the direction of Per Petterson, it might be called Out Stealing Timber, because that’s what I was doing when the idea came to me.

We were basking in a heatwave during the summer and I set the saw-horse up in the shade of an old silver birch. When I worked there I could see the waters of the fjord over to my left. Every day I would walk up into the forest and find suitable fallen trees and branches, drag them down to the cabin and saw them into good sizes to burn.

The forest belongs to Råde Community, and not to me, hence the title, Out Stealing Timber. I hope it’s not a hanging offence.

The old folk used to go up there and take out healthy trees once they grew high enough to block out the morning sun for their breakfast table. But that was then and I wouldn’t want to claim immunity by citing the sins of my forebears.

Out Stealing Timber is, of course, a metaphor, the timber standing for, well, whatever suits your purpose. You are expected to contribute a little effort if you want the novel to work for you.

I have a woman who says about her ex-husband, ‘We share only a bairn, a dog, and a car.’

She’s in her thirties, say middle thirties, and she has a soft smile which works for her with both men and women. I’ve written elsewhere about how fictional character is accrued and the woman with the smile is already beginning to don the robes of personality, those traits and individuations which mark her out from other women with other smiles who are also living in the never-never-land of their middle thirties.

Let us linger with the smile in which she puts so much faith. It is capable of seducing men and women of all ages, even children when necessary. She is a woman alone with a young daughter and needs to interact with the world. She no longer has youth, though she does not consider herself old. She needs affection sometimes, and her smile is useful for that, and other times she needs friendship, and the smile can lead that way too.

It is a soft smile in a rounded face, surrounded by blonde hair and a fair complexion. It lends an air of vulnerability to this woman who is alone. It says, ‘See me, I represent no threat. Treat me well. I have something to offer.’

The people who receive this smile, strangers who have not passed this way before, do not hurry on by. They want to know more. If they can they stick around. At least for a time.

. . . . . . . . . . to be continued

Each plant is intensely competitive and sacrifices individual bulk for the advantages of height. But when collected together they tend to allow their colour to leak into the spaces between them, forming a mass of pigment which collects and reflects the light.

It is strange to see that the brief lives of these petals have blown and ended by the time we make our return journey the following month.

The Rowan berries were the colour of sensuality.

As we left a brass band began to play on the far shore. The notes, each phrase, rippled with nostalgia.

Heading for home, back to our lives, our friends, our cherished illusions.

At the wooden gate there was a movement in the shadows of Thea’s room. I stopped and searched for its origin, waiting for another clue, but everything there lies deep in the past.

No dinner, then, watching apprehensively as the crew packed away the Scandinavian buffet; and no sleep either, for those in peril on the sea.