The disparity between the whim and fragility of his defense and WWII atrocity is sort of beautiful, I suppose, but only sort of.

It's exactly this sort of skewed intuitive folksy poetic pantheistic rationalizing that makes for so many great moments in his best novels (Growth of the Soil, Pan, Hunger) but as a moral defense stray descriptions of places and people populating his isolated late life, randomly emerging memories and whims, don't really come close to dealing with the enormity of Nazi crimes against humanity, which to be fair Hamsun doesn't seem to understand the extent of (no mention of genocide, eg), having been largely isolated from the world at the time (he was old in the 1940s, was pretty much deaf, and didn't have access to social media or CNN and apparently didn't really read the newspapers much or fully care about or understand what was going on). The verdict that's ultimately handed down isn't stated, so, without consulting the internet, Hamsun pretty much suggests that the verdict doesn't matter because he and all involved would soon enough be equalized by mortality.

But as a famous elderly writer's sly autobiographical/experiential defense against accusations of sympathy for the devil this is interesting reading, and my attention perked up whenever he turned his attention toward Germany, to the war era, when he said he never had anything bad to say about the Jews, how there's nothing in any of his writings of the sort, how he was essentially only currying favor for occupied Norway, trying to save lives since Germany apparently had big plans for Norway as a Nordic country, but the book as a whole is not really a satisfying defense in the end. All of which made for easy and agreeable reading that had me counting how many pages were left to the book’s end. There seemed to be too many stretches that went on too long, little scenes from his past, illustrating some point maybe about the transitoriness of life, how all life's concerns are really trifles considering inevitable onrushing death coming for everyone, how everyone will be forgotten, replaced by emerging generations that in turn will shine for a while and then be forgotten. Karl Ove surely read it in the original Norwegian and while the translation seems fine, reads well etc, and conveys that familiar Hamsun spirit, I didn’t find this particularly engaging. If better than what I consider Knut’s masterpiece ( The Growth of the Soil) I was in for a treat.

Acquired and read because Knausgaard called it Knut’s masterpiece in his Munch book.

Knut hamsun sult pdf