SOURCE: Axelrod, Mark. “The Poetics of Peripatetics and Peripety in Hamsun's Hunger.” In The Poetics of Novels: Fiction and Its Execution, pp. 140-70. London: Macmillan, 1999.

[In the following essay, Axelrod examines the use of space, travel, movement, and change in Hunger.]

Published in 1890, Hunger is probably Hamsun's best known and, arguably, his best written novel. Sizeably autobiographical, it deals with the time Hamsun existed in Kristiania (Oslo) and is extraordinary in terms of psychological depth and poetic temperament. But one cannot easily dismiss the effect starvation had on Hamsun and to that extent one cannot discount intentionality. As Robert Ferguson writes of Hunger in his biography, Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun: ‘In writing it he drew on the experiences he underwent during his two most desperate periods in Kristiania in the winters of 1880-81 and 1885-86, and probably, also drew on the experiences of his winter in Chicago in 1886-87. The many small correspondences of fact and fiction—the narrator's visit to the castle, for example, and his address at Tomtegaten II—as well as the autobiographical details that crop up in letters to Erik Frydenlund and Johan Sørensen, indicate that the book is Hamsun's self-portrait in fiction’ (Ferguson, p. 110). Implicit in that notion is that the voice of the protagonist is often the voice of Hamsun not only in terms of content, ‘The things I have written about in Hunger I have experienced here—and many more worse things besides. God how I have suffered. But I live …’ (Hamsun, Naess and McFarlane [hereafter Letters], 97), but in terms of poetics, ‘My book! My book! About these delicate nuances. I would want to sift through the remotest nuances of the mind—I would let them listen to the mimosa's breathing—every word like brilliantly white wings—movements on the shining surface of language’ (Hamsun, Letters, p. 88).

The course of the novel follows the nameless protagonist as he virtually wanders throughout the city while dwelling on the notions of life, death, homelessness, hunger and art all within the confines of the city's ethos. What one discovers about the character, if not with all people who are homeless, impoverished, and hungry, is that their raison d'être is a kind of survival, contingent on mobility. That is, without mobility they are effectively doomed to perish, death being the virtue of stasis. It is only this ability to move, to push a shopping cart, or carry a knapsack, or just be able to walk, that enables them to survive. In that course of that mobilization, at least in the protagonist's case, one sees two distinct features at work—peripatetics and peripety—since both notions are clearly formulated in Hamsun's Hunger and in his nameless hero.

What one knows of things peripatetic, (from the Greek peripatetikos, given to walking about), relate, of course, to Aristotle and to the school of the same name. The legend, fictional as it must be, registers that Aristotle taught and walked through the loggia of the school and hence the school became known as the Peripatos. But ‘the extant “lives” are without exception late; they were written, or rather compiled, many centuries after Aristotle's death, in the late Roman period; their sources are uncertain and, at best, even these go back to Hellenistic times’ (Grayeff, p. 13). But in a curious way there is a distinct relationship between the things peripatetic and with peripety (Greek peripeteia, a sudden change esp. that on which the plot of a tragedy hinges), and their connection between wandering and philosophizing. One discovers that the notion of things peripatetic, of things itinerant, applies with extended regularity to Hamsun's urban alienated protagonist who does, in fact, tend to philosophize whether hungry or temporarily sated. Likewise, he experiences peripety with a certain amount of regularity and the peripety sustains him in order that he may carry on with his work.

What is significant about the title of the novel is that the word, hunger, operates on several levels: hunger is obviously the physiologically painful sensation caused by lack of food, but it can also be strong desire or craving. So is the hunger a craving for food only or for something else? If the former, the food sates the hunger, but the hero is not satisfied with merely being sated. If the latter, what else is it? A hunger for death? Spirituality? Art? There is something to say for all of these things in Hunger, for all of them are attributable to it.

The novel begins as a memoir: ‘It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him …’ (Hamsun, p. 3). And the ellipsis, the leap or sudden passage from one topic to another, lets the reader know that the hero has not succumbed to starvation. From the opening lines one realizes that although it is a memoir, a recollection, the past events are revivified by the way Hamsun records them: ‘Lying awake in my attic room, I hear a clock strike six downstairs’ (Hamsun, p. 3). Even though this is a recollection of past events, the experience lingers on in the present. The relationship between past and present, between the events of the past and the re-experiencing of those events in the present is crucial in Hamsun's poetics. For in addition to the preoccupation the protagonist has with ‘space’ (he constantly tells us where he is going) he is also preoccupied with ‘time’ (he constantly informs us of the time of day) for in the daily exercise of someone who is homeless there are three main constituents: where one is, what time of day it is, and what one is thinking during the day. One's thoughts can be as desultory as one's movements and are as varied as the vagabond himself. But if one's thoughts revolve around one's station and how one got to be in that station, then the thoughts can be as varied as one's attitude towards philosophy or death or the absence of God. Perhaps one has a daily route one follows or perhaps one merely moves vagrantly, as one might expect from a wanderer. In any case, what is established is the necessity to establish cause and to dwell on one's reason for being.

As the novel opens, it is six in the morning. Our hero's wall is papered with old issues of the Morning Times and ads from both the Director of Lighthouses and Fabian Olsen, Baker as well as from ‘Shrouds at Madam Andersen's’. Certainly the juxtaposition of these four items has not been made precipitously and the connection among ‘light’ and ‘bread’ and ‘death’ is not a serendipitous one on Hamsun's part. As a matter of fact, the foundation for the entire novel rests on the notions of light and bread and death since they are part of the wandering process that the protagonist experiences. ‘Autumn had arrived, that lovely cool time of year when everything turns colour and dies … This empty room, where the floor rocked up and down at every step I took, was like a horrible, broken-down coffin’ (Hamsun, p. 4). It is also early in the novel that the protagonist's appeals to the divine begin. These are appeals for either divine intervention or divine understanding or divine apprehension as in: ‘God knows, I thought, if there is any point to my looking for work anymore!’ (Hamsun, p. 4) and as the novel proceeds the supplications often become invectives though the protagonist never entirely loses faith even while he is in the process of denouncing it.

The conflicting notions of life and death persist as one also discovers that, ‘All summer long I had haunted the cemeteries and Palace Park, where I would sit and prepare articles for the newspapers, column after column about all sorts of things—strange whimsies, moods, caprices of my restless brain’ (Hamsun, p. 5). At this point one discovers that the act of writing is not peripheral to the protagonist's hunger. As a matter of fact, the act of writing, the art of writing, is fundamental to the novel since the novel is not only about hunger, spiritual and physical, but about the art of writing.

Then it is nine o'clock in the morning. Three hours have passed and ‘Nothing was further from my mind than just taking a morning walk in the fresh air’ (Hamsun, p. 5). At this point the wandering begins in earnest. Only capable of thinking about his hunger ‘If only one had a bite to eat on such a clear day!’ (Hamsun, p. 6) he ‘looked up—the clock in the tower of Our Saviour's showed ten. Continuing through the streets, I roamed about without a care in the world, stopped at a corner without having to, turned and went down a side street without an errand there. I went with the flow, borne from place to place this happy morning, rocking serenely to and fro among other happy people’ (Hamsun, p. 6). The protagonist is very specific about where he goes and what he is doing there. Whether it be trailing a cripple or hastening to a pawnbroker, each movement is a calculated movement; each movement is done with some measure of purpose; each movement is not done for the simple sake of moving, but to accomplish some daily task and at the same time to think about the measure of what one has accomplished. Yet as one reads on, the deleterious effects of hunger affect him: aches in his ribs, pelvis, lower extremities; he is consumed by nervous excitement, extreme irritability, there is the loosening of social bonds, the lessening of morale; apathy appears, mental depression, nausea, lack of concentration, lack of ambition, melancholy, submissiveness, all exhibit themselves as being directly influenced by hunger. Curiously, sexual indifference is not included. But one sees influences in the manner in which Hamsun alters the focus of the paragraph:

Once I had pulled through, I certainly didn't want to owe anybody a blanket; I might start an article this very day about the crimes of the future or the freedom of the will, anything whatever, something worth reading, something I would get at least ten kroner for … And at the thought of this article I instantly felt an onrush of desire to begin right away, tapping my chock-full brain. I would find myself a suitable place in Palace Park and not rest till it was finished.

(Hamsun, p. 7)

There is absolutely no causal connection between the blanket and the article, nothing to stimulate the thought of it and just as quickly the thought is dispelled. After finally getting a bite to eat at Palace Hill ‘my courage rose markedly; I was no longer satisfied with writing an article about something so elementary and straightforward as crimes of the future, which anybody could guess, or simply learn by reading history. I felt capable of a greater effort and, being in the mood to surmount difficulties, decided upon a three-part monograph about philosophical cognition’ (Hamsun, p. 9). After he eats, he discards the idea of ‘crimes of the future’ for a more difficult enterprise dealing with Kant and Renan. Naturally, he says, he would ‘deal a deathblow to Kant's sophistries’ (Hamsun, p. 10) though one might be hard-pressed to decipher what sophistries he is talking about; however, one may speculate that the link between Kant and Renan appears to be their representative positions on the existence of God and how those philosophies relate to the protagonist. Then, with another ellipsis, he discovers that his pencil is gone. He pleads to God again, ‘God, how everything I touched seemed bent on going wrong’ (Hamsun, p. 10) and he attempts to recover the pencil forgotten at the pawn shop. As he does, he decides not to attack Kant, and says ‘I just had to make an imperceptible detour when I came to the problem of time and space’ (Hamsun, p. 10), but he ‘wouldn't have to answer for Renan, that old parson’ (Hamsun, p. 10). Hamsun's choice is not serendipitous. Of course, the peripatetic hero not only philosophizes, but intends to write on philosophical issues (clearly an un-commercial exercise) and the issues he chooses to write about are integral to the hero's character and his journey. Hamsun's choices here beg a kind of decomposition.

Certainly one of the things that brings both Kant and Renan together are their approaches to the existence of God. Kant's Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrun (The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God), is the fundamental underpinning of the Critique of Pure Reason published two decades later. Simply formulated, the work consists of three sections which put forward the ground of proof, the utility of the proof and the reasons which demonstrate the existence of God, but Kant also leads with a disclaimer that ‘The rule of thoroughness does not always require that every concept, in even the most profound essay, be developed or defined; particularly if one may be assured that the clear, common concept can cause no misunderstanding where it is used’ (Kant, p. 53). But Kant's ‘strategy is to show that God is necessary because some things are possible’ (Kant, p. 14). To that end, ‘it is not possible for there to be nothing, for the very possibility of total non-being would itself have to be at least a possibility. If sheer non-being is impossible, whatever is requisite as ground for even the possibility of anything is necessary’ (Kant, p. 14). That the protagonist talks about Kant's sophisms can only be taken in the context in which he is referring to Kant (that is, in relation to God). If Kant speaks in sophisms it is purely in relation to the existence of God and since God is fundamentally indifferent to the protagonist's welfare, the existence of Kant's God is not co-existent with the protagonist's notions of God. What is curious is that the protagonist eventually recants and decides not to ‘deal a deathblow to Kant's sophisms’ since it could be avoided by an imperceptible detour ‘when I came to the problem of time and space’. One might ask why he would avoid dealing with issues of time and space since time and space are all he owns. In terms of pure reason, philosophers in Kant's time (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) agreed that pure reason could prove the existence of God and the nature of the soul. With Kant's Critique of Pure Reason all Rational sciences came under scrutiny.

Perhaps the answer comes from Kant himself. In the Critique of Pure Reason, First Section of the Transcendental Aesthetic, §2. Of Space, he writes: ‘Space is represented as an infinite given quantity. Now it is quite true that every concept is to be thought as a representation, which is contained in an infinite number of different possible representations (as their common characteristic), and therefore comprehends them: but no concept, as such, can be thought as if it contained in itself an infinite number of representations. Nevertheless, space is so thought (for all parts of infinite space exist simultaneously). Consequently, the original representation of space is an intuition a priori, and not a concept’ (Kant, p. 63). In the Second Section of the Transcendental Aesthetic, §4. Of Time, Kant writes: ‘Time is not an empirical concept deduced from any experience, for neither coexistence nor succession would enter into our perception, if the representation of time were not given a priori. Only when this representation a priori is given, can we imagine that certain things happen at the same time (simultaneously) or at different times (successively)’ (Kant, p. 67). Clearly both of these examples indicate why Hamsun's protagonist (or anyone else starving to death) would indeed make a detour around Kant's notions of space and time especially in how it relates to notions of the divine; however, Renan is another story.

Renan did not believe in a transcendent and personal God. Borrowing the ‘three age’ theory from Cousin, Renan believed in the final age of man to be both scientific and religious and believed in the clear scientific action of a universe in which there was no perceptible action of a free will superior to man. According to Renan, mankind ‘had been pictured by classical historians in terms of an absolute, fixed, static being, the great advance of the nineteenth-century historical thought lies in “substituting the category of becoming (devenir) for that of being (être), the conception of the relative (relatif) for that of the absolute (absolu), and movement for immobility”’ (Chadbourne, p. 50). Renan ‘conceives of God no longer as a personal being, absolute and eternal, but as a spiritual reality emerging from human history. “What else is God for humanity except the transcendent sum of its spiritual needs, the category of the ideal, the form under which we conceive the ideal, just as space and time are categories or forms under which we conceive physical bodies”’ (Chadbourne, p. 50). Renan objected to the transcendental because, for him, knowledge of reality was obtained through observation and the verification of empirical hypotheses. Positive knowledge of reality must have an experimental basis and that was why the enlightened man could not believe in God since a being who does not reveal himself by any act is for science a being that does not exist. The occurrence of divine intervention has never been proved yet the empirical evidence does not preclude the act of faith and this is exactly the conundrum the character is faced with and that is why he decides to avoid dealing with Kant and take issue with Renan. On the face of it the selection appears quite arbitrary, but subsequently the true significance of choosing these two philosophers becomes quite clear.

But whatever the choice, ‘what had to be done was to write an article filling so and so many columns; the unpaid rent and my landlady's long looks when I met her on the stairs in the morning, tormented me all day and popped up even in my happy moments, when there wasn't another dark thought in my head’ (Hamsun; p. 10).

In order to finish his article he needs the pencil and with that pencil he had ‘written my monograph about philosophical cognition in three volumes’ (Hamsun, p. 14). Hadn't the pawnbroker heard of it? So not only does the ‘lie’ establish the protagonist as a kind of literary provocateur, it also establishes the need, the hunger, he has to write. By now it is twelve noon and as he walks down Karl Johan Street, by the University, and wanders up Palace Hill he begins to think about his present circumstances in relation to the ‘happy’ people he sees on the street. At this point the apparent philosophical digression becomes specific and the ambivalence comes to fruition.

Coddling myself with this thought I found that a terrible injustice had been done to me. Why had these last few months been so exceedingly rough on me? … What was the matter with me? Had the Lord's finger pointed at me? But why exactly me? … why precisely I should have been chosen as a guinea pig for a caprice of divine grace … I wandered about debating this matter, unable to get it out of my mind; I discovered the weightiest objections to the Lord's arbitrariness in letting me suffer for everybody else's sake … What if God simply intended to annihilate me? I stood up and paced back and forth in front of my bench … The thought of God began to occupy me again. It seemed to me quite inexcusable of him to meddle every time I applied for a job and thus upset everything, since all I was asking for was my daily bread … I felt increasingly bitter toward God for his continual oppressions. If he meant to draw me closer to himself and make me better by torturing me and casting adversity in my way, he was simply mistaken, that I could vouch for. And nearly crying with defiance, I looked up toward heaven and told him so once and for all, inwardly … Had not my heavenly Father provided for me as he had for the sparrows of the air, and had he not shown me the grace of pointing at his humble servant? God had stuck his finger down into the network of my nerves and gently, quite casually, brought a little confusion among the threads. And God had withdrawn his finger and behold! there were fibres and delicate filaments on his finger from the threads of my nerves. And there was a gaping hole after his finger, which was God's finger, and wounds in my brain from the track of his finger. But where God had touched me with the finger of his hand he let me be and touched me no more, and allowed no evil to befall me. He let me go in peace, and he let me go with that gaping hole. And no evil shall befall me from God, who is the Lord through all eternity … (my emphasis)

(Hamsun, pp. 16-17)

The paragraph is noteworthy in that there is a subtle shift from being divinely accusative, filled with imprecations, to being divinely contrite which is totally consistent with his own moral ambivalence. In other words, ultimately he embraces Kant and dismisses Renan since he initially refuses to take personal responsibility, but, rather, blames his condition on the Lord. But the blame does not last. Soon the Lord gains a ‘reprieve’, hostage as the protagonist is to his childhood and the ‘cadences’ of the Bible, and the protagonist assumes some kind of personal responsibility for his actions.

But, stylistically, the paragraph is unique in that what Hamsun is attempting to achieve here through the use of polysyndeton is a kind of Biblical rhythm and in the poetics of that Biblical rhythm there is a clear valorization not only of the Biblical discourse itself, but the subject of the Biblical discourse. The use of polysyndeton is equivalent to the leitwort that Robert Alter speaks of in The Art of Biblical Narrative. ‘A leitwort is a word or a word- root that recurs significantly in a text, in a continuum of texts, or in a configuration of texts: by following these repetitions, one is able to decipher or grasp a meaning of the text, or at any rate, the meaning will be revealed more strikingly … The measured repetition that matches the inner rhythm of the text, or rather, that wells up from it, is one of the most powerful means for conveying meaning without expressing it’ (Alter, p. 93). Hence the shift in style from the accusative to the contrite; from the implied acceptance of Kant to the implied condemnation of Renan and all of this is done peripatetically. By now, it is two o'clock in the afternoon.

But it is not only the relationship of the protagonist to his God that is significant, but the relationship of the writer to his work. In that sense he is to his work what God is to him. One cannot easily attribute his rapid digressions to the fact he is starving since the narrator is not starving. The narrator is recalling what it was like to starve which is a completely different version of starvation indeed. Hamsun clearly captures the physiological and psychological privation inherent in the condition, but precisely because it is a reconstruction of the incidents makes it such a unique work especially when one considers that he was completing the novel in Copenhagen where he was often not lacking. But woven within the fabric of the novel one clearly distinguishes that it is, as in the works of Austen or Smart or Lispector, a novel about writing as well. The entire Happolati incident is just such an example in which lies appear ‘full-fledged in my head on the spur of the moment’ (Hamsun, p. 20) and as he continues fabricating the tale of the fictitious Happolati he himself becomes carried away with the fiction. ‘This was beginning to get interesting. The situation was running away with me, and one lie after another sprang up in my head … The little dwarf's gullibility made me reckless, I felt like stuffing full of lies come what may, driving him from the field in grand style. Had he heard about the electric hymn book that Happolati had invented?’ … I was completely taken up with my own tales, wonderful visions hovered before my eyes, the blood rushed to my head and I lied like a trooper’ (Hamsun, pp. 21-3). These are not the thoughts of a ‘madman’; they are the thoughts of a fiction writer absorbed in the details of his fabrication as the fabrication takes over the writer and, in a way, the writing itself. The passage: ‘Quite instinctively, I had gotten paper and pencil into my hands, and I sat and wrote mechanically the date 1848 in every corner of the page. If only a single scintillating thought would come, grip me utterly, and put words in my mouth! It had happened before after all, it had really happened that such moments came over me, so that I could write a long piece without effort and get it wonderfully right. I sit there on the bench and write 1848 dozens of times; I write this number crisscross in all possible shapes and wait for a usable idea to occur to me. A swarm of loose thoughts is fluttering about in my head’ (Hamsun, p. 25), is clearly and precisely a summary of the entire writing process.

What is significant about this passage is that it begins talking about writing and segue-ways into writing about autumn and death then shifts back to writing:

And I sat down again, picked up my pencil once more and was ready to attack my article in earnest. It would never do to give up when the unpaid rent was staring me in the face. My thoughts gradually began to compose themselves. Taking great care I wrote slowly a couple of well-considered pages, an introduction to something; it could serve as the beginning to almost anything, whether a travelogue or a political article, depending on what I felt like doing. It was an excellent beginning to something or other.

(Hamsun, pp. 25-6)

Then, he perceives a ‘gaping emptiness’ followed by ‘“Lord, my God and Father!” I cried in agony, and I repeated this cry several times in succession without adding a word’ (Hamsun, p. 26). With one last appeal to God he prays ‘silently to God for this job’ (Hamsun, p. 27) he has discovered. ‘Then I went back up to my room and sat down to think in my rocking chair, while the darkness grew more and more impenetrable. It was beginning to be difficult to stay up now’ (Hamsun, p. 27). And so ends the first day.

The second day begins much as the first. Time, as well as space, continues to be of critical concern. He notes that it is five o'clock. What he is preoccupied with at that time of day is neither physical hunger nor the existence of God, but writing:

Suddenly one or two good sentences occur to me, suitable for a sketch or story, nice linguistic flukes the likes of which I had never experienced before. I lie there repeating these words to myself and find that they are excellent. Presently they are joined by others, I'm at once wide-awake, sit up and grab paper and pencil from the table behind my bed. It was as though a vein had burst inside me—one word follows another, they connect with one another and turn into situations; scenes pile on top of other scenes, actions and dialogue well up in my brain, and a wonderful sense of pleasure takes hold of me. I write as if possessed, filling one page after another without a moment's pause. My thoughts strike me so suddenly and continue to pour out so abundantly that I lose a lot of minor details I'm not able to write down fast enough, though I am working at full blast. They continue to crowd in on me, I am full of my subject, and every word I write is put in my mouth.

(Hamsun, p. 28)

Hamsun continues in this fashion for several more paragraphs as if possessed by the writing process until ‘Elated with a sense of fulfillment and puffed up with joy, I feel on top of the world’ (Hamsun, p. 28) and reckons the piece to be worth at least five, maybe ten kroner. Coterminous with the completion of the story, ‘it was growing lighter and lighter in the room’ (Hamsun, p. 28) even though he could read ‘the fine, skeleton-like letters concerning Madam Andersen's shrouds’ (Hamsun, p. 28). By now it is past seven, but not quite eight. And as he leaves his room with a ‘glorious feeling’ making me thankful to God and everyone, and I

kneeled down by the bed and thanked God in a loud voice, for his goodness toward me this morning. I knew—oh yes, I knew that the exalted moment and the inspiration I had just experienced and written down was a wonderful work of heaven in my soul, an answer to my cry of distress yesterday. ‘It's God! It's God!’ I cried to myself and I wept from enthusiasm over my own words …

(Hamsun, p. 30)

There is, of course, the relationship between God and inspiration and when the protagonist is ‘inspired’ to produce he thanks God in the same way he blasphemes against God when he is not inspired. The word ‘enthusiasm’ means ‘to be filled with God’ and the relationship is clear. This attitude is a bit understated by Hamsun himself when he was asked to describe his attitude towards religion and he replied ‘Almost indifferent. I am not godless, but like all my friends and acquaintances, indifferent to questions of religion. No, no change whatsoever. I am not much good at praying to God, but warmly grateful to him when he has been merciful, and saved me from something or other’ (Ferguson, p. 399). His letters as well as his novel belie that attitude.

At ten o'clock he drops off the manuscript he has been toiling over. The editor is not there. He must return at four. He begins to walk. Then the doubts begin to enter. He walks to Our Saviour's Church and daydreams. Time passes. He reconsiders the manuscript, questions his ability; his hope moves to despair: ‘Could I be absolutely certain that my story was truly inspired, a little artistic masterpiece? God knows it might have some faults here and there … What if it was quite mediocre or perhaps downright bad; what guarantee did I have that it wasn't at this very moment lying in the wastepaper basket already?’ (Hamsun, p. 33). It is now twelve. He continues to walk and to ponder. Suddenly he realizes it is past four and returns, sees the editor who says he will be in touch. The piece has not been rejected. ‘My hopes are fired up again, nothing was lost yet—on the contrary, I could still win everything, for that matter. And my brain began to fantasize about a great council in heaven where it had just been decided that I should win, win capitally, ten kroner for a story … (Hamsun, p. 35). He walks to the harbour and ponders. It is nine. He falls asleep, awakes. He walks some more. It is ten when he finally reaches the Bogstad Woods and so ends the second day.

When the third day begins there is no sun when he awakes at about three in the afternoon. He continues to walk and as he walks, as he ponders his condition, he says ‘All in all, it was simply absurd to live like this. Holy Christ, what had I done to deserve this special persecution anyway! I simply couldn't understand’ (Hamsun, p. 39). The rest of the day is spent in idle wandering moving from one venue to another, thinking the same, yet different, thoughts. At seven he goes to the Oplandske Café waiting for someone from whom he can borrow money. At eight the person arrives, but he has nothing to lend. ‘Oh God, I'm so miserable! Oh God, I'm so miserable’ (Hamsun, p. 46) and he continues walking again. He finally returns to his room, to the place he'd never return to and discovers a letter:

A stream of light seems to surge through my breast, and I hear myself giving a little cry, a meaningless sound of joy: the letter was from the editor, my story was accepted, it had gone directly to the composing room! A few minor changes … corrected a few slips of the pen … promising work … to be printed tomorrow … ten kroner. Laughing and crying, I made a running start and raced down the street, stopped to slap my thighs and flung a solemn oath into space for no particular reason. And time passed.

(Hamsun, p. 48)

At the conjunction of depression and wandering, peripeteia appears: the ten kroner. By the end of Part I, the protagonist has been on a perpipatetic journey that has taken him at least one time to the following places: Our Saviour's Church, Grænsen Street, Palace Park, Palace Hill, Pascha's Bookstore, Pilestrædet Lane, Cisler's Music store, University Street, St. Olaf Place, Karl Johan Street, the Students' Promenade, Stortorvet Square, Aker Street, Ullevaal Road, St. Hanshaugen, Kirke Street, Haegdenhaugen district, Majorstuen, Bogstad Woods, Jærnbanetorvet Square, the Steam Kitchen, Grønlandsleret Street, Møller Street, Christ's Cemetery, Oplandske Café, Torv Street, the Arcades. But it has also taken him on a peripatetic journey as well since his situation has been changed by virtue of selling an article. Hence this is how the protagonist survives: the peripatetic wanderer dependent on the peripeteic investment of others.

As part two begins, a fortnight has passed and the narrator is back in the cemetery again, before leaving for Jærnbane Pier. It is ten at night, he is disconsolate and he is broke again, but what is of interest here is the relationship between his hunger and his art. As he attempts to ‘kill time’ at the pier he is also in the process of creating fiction. ‘I sat there with tears in my eyes gasping for breath, quite beside myself with feverish merriment. I began to talk aloud, told myself the story of the cornet, aped the poor policeman's movements, peeped into the hollow of my hand and repeated over and over to myself: He coughed when he threw it away! He coughed when he threw it away! I added new words, with titillating supplements, changed the whole sentence and made it more pointed’ (Hamsun, p. 53). In this feverish excitement of the ‘revisionary’ process, the protagonist segue-ways into the relationship between ships and voyages before the transition into the discourse on Ylajali, the fictional name of a woman he meets on the street. But the poetics of the mental journey take him via the ‘silent monsters’ and their ‘black hulls’, resting in the harbour, across the sea to Ylajali's castle in which he writes in detail how both she and the space appear as he employs such figurative language as: a sparkling hall (light); amethyst walls (blue); a throne of yellow roses (light); twenty summers (light); every white night (light); bright orchards (light); brilliant emerald hall (sparkling green); sun shines (light); choral music (harmony); waves of fragrance (sweetness); wild beauty of enchantment; red hall of rubies; and among all this light, they kiss. When he thinks of love, he thinks in images of brilliance, of light. She is a fictional redeemer. She and her love redeem him (at least at the fictive level) from the darkness associated with death. He comments on his blood perceiving a subtle greeting from her (Hamsun, p. 13) and feels ‘the wild beauty of enchantment race through my blood’ (Hamsun, p. 54). She becomes, in effect, the queen goddess of the world for the woman is life who saves him from the darkness. It is not coincidental that in describing his meeting with Ylajali in the castle, the protagonist begins in the yellow chamber, progresses through a corridor to another, green chamber, then through another corridor to the innermost recesses of the red chamber before he is thrust back into a ‘hurricane of light’ after which he returns to wakefulness ‘mercilessly called back to life and my misery’ (Hamsun, p. 54). But, of course, the image of the woman is not the woman and the fictive quality of woman is much greater than her presence in the flesh.

Whereas the Ylajali Episode is almost totally contingent on notions of light, the Tangen Episode is almost totally contingent on darkness. The Tangen Episode (so called because the protagonist when offered by the police a place to spend the night because of his ‘homelessness’ uses the pseudonym, Andreas Tangen, journalist) works as a counterpoint to the Ylajali Episode. He thinks spending the night as an indigent in the warm confines of the police station is a good idea since it will afford him a place to rest. But what happens during the night is he becomes captive to his own fear and that is reflected in his language. After the lights are turned out he says:

But I wasn't sleepy and couldn't fall asleep. I lay awhile looking into the darkness, a thick massive darkness, without end that I wasn't able to fathom. My thoughts couldn't grasp it. It struck me as excessively dark and I felt its presence as oppressive. I closed my eyes, began to sing in an undertone, and tossed back and forth in the bunk to distract myself, but it was no use. The darkness had taken possession of my thoughts and didn't leave me alone for a moment. What if I myself were to be dissolved into darkness, made one with it? I sit up in bed and flail my arms.

(Hamsun, p. 60)

‘Darkness’ of various intensity seems to be the operative word here as Tangen struggles against it. And in his battle against the darkness he suddenly chances upon a word—Kuboaa.

The word stood out sharply against the darkness before me. I sit with open eyes, amazed at my find and laughing for joy. Then I start whispering: they might be spying on me, and I intended to keep my invention a secret.

(Hamsun, p. 61)

He struggles to make some sense of the word.

No, the word was really suited to mean something spiritual, a feeling, a state of mind—couldn't I understand that? And I try to jog my memory to come up with something spiritual. Then it seems to me someone is speaking, sticking his nose into my chat, and I answer angrily, What was that? Oh my, you'll get the prize for biggest idiot! Knitting yarn? Go to hell! Why should I be under an obligation to let it mean knitting yarn when I was particularly opposed to its meaning knitting yarn?

(Hamsun, p. 61-2)

But then the darkness returns but with more intensity and he uses such phrases as ‘brooding darkness’, ‘the same unfathomable black eternity’, both of which lead him into thoughts of dying. ‘This is what it's like to die, I said to myself, and now you're going to die!’ (Hamsun, p. 63) until he spots a ‘grayish square in the wall, a whitish tone, a hint of something—it was the daylight’ (Hamsun, p. 63) and it is only then that he ‘returns to his senses’ and falls asleep from exhaustion. Not coincidentally, it is the manifestation of the word Kuboaa and its sundry meanings that rescues him from the darkness and sustains him until the first meagre morning light as it has been the word that has sustained him throughout the course of the novel when he has been on the brink of starvation.

The remainder of Part II continues in much the same way as it has up to Part II consisting of: his imprecations to God; his wanderings (especially to the harbour); his chats with himself; his acts of self-torture and persecution; his acknowledgement of the powers of darkness; his suffering from the ache of honour all of which lead eventually to Part III which opens with ‘a week went by in joy and gladness’ (Hamsun, p. 91). After which the narrator talks of two specific items: his writing and The Nun, which was ready to sail from Kristiania. The allusion to the ship and to sailing has already been established and essentially has laid the groundwork for the narrator's imminent departure which one reads at the conclusion of Part IV. But the major portion of the opening pages of Part III is devoted exclusively to his writing. ‘I toiled at my work day after day, barely allowing myself time to gulp down my food before going on with my writing again’ (Hamsun, p. 91). He finishes an article and takes it to the Editor and while he is there he looked about me in the small office: busts, lithographs, clippings, and an immense wastebasket that looked as though it could swallow a man whole. I felt sad at the sight of this huge maw, these dragon's jaws which were always open, always ready to receive fresh scrapped writings—fresh blasted hopes' (Hamsun, p. 92). Of course his article, on Correggio, is politely rejected by the editor with the statement, ‘Everything we can use must be so popular … You know the sort of public we have. Couldn't you try to make it a bit simpler? Or else come up with something that people will understand better?’ (Hamsun, p. 93), but he refuses to take an advance and decries his ‘unlucky stars’ (dis/aster) before he meets a young woman, Marie, and the narrative shifts to sexually explicit events, yet he is presumably impotent. ‘Alas, I had no real bounce in me these days. Women had become almost like men to me. Want had dried me up. But I felt I was cutting a sorry figure vis-à-vis this strange tart and wanted to save face’ (Hamsun, p. 98). He preaches to her under the pseudonym of Pastor such and such then sends her off in favour of his writing, of revising. Standing outside of his room, in the lamplight he tries to write, ‘But the words wouldn't come. I read through the entire piece from the beginning, read each sentence aloud, but I just couldn't collect my thoughts for this crashing climax’ (Hamsun, p. 99).

What is of significance here is the relationship the narrator has with writing and how the act of writing sustains him. From the Tangen Episode one recalls that it was the ‘word’ that kept the oppressive darkness from consuming him; in the Marie Episode, he dispatches the woman in favor of his writing. Clearly, there is a relationship between what the novel is about and the writing of the novel itself. What the novel is about is hunger, but it is also about the act and process of writing. Writing under the influence of hunger, writing and the writing process. There are several levels of writing at work. On one level it is the narrator talking about his own writing, but it is also Hamsun writing about the narrator writing as well. So we have the narrator writing about his trials as a writer under the influence of hunger and of Hamsun's writing of Hunger under the influence of hunger. Which brings up the experience of hunger and its psychology. The cumulative effects of hunger inevitably lead to emotional instability. There are protracted periods of depression; the inability to sustain mental or physical effort; the discouragement due to one's relative inability to cope with daily life; there is increased irritability; a lack of self-discipline and self-control; an increased sensitivity to noise; marked nervousness; and personal neglect. Hamsun himself writes in a letter dated 2 December 88:

I cannot work—not well, not with the right touch. I am sitting here in a garret with the wind blowing through the walls. There is no stove, almost no light, only one small pane in the roof … The food situation has also been quite desperate; many times last summer it seemed all up with me. Edvard Brandes saved me several times; so I used what I got from Brandes to write a little for Politiken, but in the meantime the money has gone and my position is no different from what it was. In the end you really become quite wretched, quite faint. Then you can't write; and you just start crying when you can't get things to go

(Naess & McFarlane, p. 71).

One finds that the presumed ‘madness’ experienced by the narrator is often the same as the presumed ‘madness’ of his creator. From the Tangen Episode one reads:

I had passed over into the sheer madness of hunger; I was empty and without pain and my thoughts were running riot. I debate with myself in silence. With the oddest jumps in my line of thought, I try to ascertain the meaning of my “new word”.

(Hamsun, p. 61)

And from a letter dated 1888 one reads:

I cannot get away from it. My book! my book! About these delicate nuances. I would want to sift through the remotest nuances of the mind—I would let them listen to the mimosa's breathing—every word like brilliantly white wings—movements of the shining surface of language. My mind cries out in its longing to begin! I haven't time to wait—the devils of my work will not leave me in peace! Now is the fullness of time! Now my book should be out!

(Naess and McFarlane, p. 88)

Certainly, the relationship between narrator and creator is there in the language, in the structure of the language and in the passion of the language. Just as the language is there to help sustain the narrator in times of financial and physical crisis, the language is there for Hamsun to sustain him in the same dilemma. Women do not sustain him. The image of Ylajali he has in Part II is not the same as his eventual ‘revelation’ of her, which concludes in Part III with:

She came quickly over to me and held out her hand. I looked at her full of distrust. Was she doing this freely, with a light heart? Or was she doing it just to get rid of me? She put her arm around my neck, tears in her eyes. I just stood and looked at her. She offered me her mouth but I couldn't believe her, it was bound to be a sacrifice on her part, a means of getting it over with.

(Hamsun, p. 143)

Certainly the realization of the woman is not the same as the fascination of the woman and the subject of one's desires cannot in any meaningful way sustain in the narrator the same way the fascination of the subject can. In other words, any realization of an event cannot be as redeeming as the fictionalizing of the event. The realization of the event is purely in the power of the manifested word and not in the manifestation of the event. That is the reason why the narrator constantly returns to his writing, to the manuscript at hand, to the words. And with the conclusion of the ‘amorous affair’ with Ylajali in both mind and matter, the narrator returns to his writing in Part IV.

As Part IV opens, winter has arrived. The narrator has been living in Vaterland district for several weeks attempting to avoid the landlady over the rent. Though he is out of money, his situation has improved somewhat and he continues to pursue his writing though he has reached a kind of ‘writer's block’ on a piece he started that was supposed to be ‘an allegory abut a fire in a bookstore’. At that time there comes a confrontation with the landlady in which the following dialogue ensues:

‘I'm working on an article, as I mentioned to you before,’ I said, ‘and as soon as it's finished you'll get your money. There's no need to worry.’

‘But you won't ever finish that article, will you?’

‘You think so? I may feel inspired to write tomorrow, or maybe even tonight; it's not all impossible that the inspiration will come sometime tonight, and then my article will be finished in a quarter of an hour, at the most. You see, it's not the same with my work (my emphasis) as with other people's; I can't just sit down and get so much done every day, I have to wait for the right moment. And nobody can tell the day or the hour when the spirit will come upon him. It must take its course.

(Hamsun, p. 150)

The admission is not convincing and not only does the landlady walk away, but later in the chapter she tells him it will be his last night there. But what is different about this part of the novel is that the narrator has made an admission that heretofore has not been admitted; namely, he is a writer. He establishes that it is his work and that admission focalizes the chapter in a significant way, a significant writerly way, since he now associates himself with his writing. The difficulties arise when the landlady and her tenants give the narrator a difficult time by not allowing him to ‘write in peace’.

‘While I think of it, I must tell you that I simply can't afford to let people have board and room on credit,’ she said. ‘I have told you this before, remember.’

‘But please, it's only a matter of a couple of days, till my article gets finished,’ I answered. ‘Then I'll gladly give you an extra five-krone bill, yes, very gladly.’

But she obviously had no faith in my article, I could see that.

(Hamsun, p. 156)

What one finds in this section of the fourth part is that the narrator does not wander. In previous sections, he has wandered about, often aimlessly, in search of something to quell his ‘hunger’. But in this section his needs have been sated, at least for the short term, and he is able to devote his attention, albeit divided, to writing. Except for several excursions from his room, the narrator is constantly absorbed with two things: paying his rent and finishing the article which is eventually abandoned in favour of a drama titled “The Sign of the Cross” with a theme from the Middle Ages. It is with the play that the narrator deals with a number of aspects of the writing process and it is well to quote in full what he says:

In particular, the central character was fully worked out in my mind—a gorgeous fanatical whore who had sinned in the temple, not out of weakness or lust, but from a hatred of heaven, had sinned at the very foot of the altar with the altar cloth under her head, simply from a voluptuous contempt of heaven.

‘I became more an more obsessed by this character as the hours went by. She stood vividly alive before my eyes at last, exactly the way I wanted to portray her. Her body was to be misshapen and repulsive: tall, very skinny and rather dark, with long legs that showed through her skirts at every step she took. She would also have big, protruding ears. In short, she would not be easy on the eyes, barely tolerable to look at. What interested me about her was her wonderful shamelessness, the desperate excess of pre-meditated sin that she had committed. I was actually too much taken up with her, my brain was downright swollen with this queer monstrosity of a human being. I worked for two whole hours at a stretch on my play.

When I had done about ten pages, or perhaps twelve, often with great difficulty, at times with long intervals during which I wrote to no avail and to tear up my sheets, I was tired, quite numb with cold and weariness, and I got up and went out into the street.

(Hamsun, p. 157)

The narrator has exercised his mind and his creative skill to the limit and only when he has finished does he leave his room and even then he still thinks about the work he has to finish. The focus of Part IV vacillates between the two conditions of revising the work-in-progress and the inability to work without interruption, the latter of which constantly impinges on the former. If it is not the landlady who interrupts him, then it is the noise and agitation of the other residents. Frustrated with the attempt, he leaves the house again and returns to the docks a venue which works on two levels: first, the docks are a kind of ‘refrain’ in the storyline since the narrator is constantly returning to the docks as if it will be his final salvation; and two, it offers him a place to continue his writing, albeit for a short period of time.

I came down to the docks. A big barque with a Russian flag was unloading coal; I read its name, Copégoro, on the ship's side … The sun, the light, the salty breath from the ocean, all this lively, bustling activity stiffened my backbone and set my heart throbbing. All at once it occurred to me that I might do a couple of scenes of my play while sitting here. I took my sheets of paper from my pocket.

I tried to shape up some line from the lips of the monk, lines that ought to swell with intolerance and power, but I didn't succeed. So I skipped the monk and tried to work out a speech, that which the judge addressed to the desecrator of the temple, and I wrote half a page of this speech, whereupon I stopped. My words just wouldn't evoke the right atmosphere. The bustling activity around me, the sea shanties, the noise of the capstans, and the incessant clanking of the railcar couplings agreed poorly with that thick, musty air of mediaevalism which was to envelop my play, like fog. I gathered up my papers and got up.

(Hamsun, p. 168)

It is not surprising that Hamsun has set up the narrator for his inevitable departure in this way. There is the relationship between the departure from Kristiania (the return) and the satiation of the narrator's hunger (his writing). The narrator has often come to the docks before, but the docks had a distinctly onerous and oneiric quality to them distinct from the rather exhuberant quality he experiences in Part IV. The reason for the change is apparent: he has found his work. Once he has found his work, the reason for staying in Kristiania is over. Just as Hamsun had to experience hunger to write about it, so too does his narrator need to experience hunger to write about it.

He returns to his room and, as in previous parts, a peripety awaits when ‘A few steps outside the entrance the messenger catches up with me, says hello once more and stops me. He hands me a letter. Angry and reluctant, I tear it open—a ten-krone bill falls out of the envelope, but no letter, not a word’ (Hamsun, p. 173). Saved once again, the narrator pays off his debt to his landlady and strikes off again knowing that he has no money to eat on. But the physical hunger is displaced as he once again turns his attention to his work:

It was probably around four by now, in a couple of hours I might get to see the theatre manager if my play had been finished. I take out the manuscript on the spot and try to put together the three or four last scenes, by hook or by crook. I think and sweat and read it through from the beginning but can't get anywhere. No nonsense, now! I say, no bullheadedness there! And so I work for dear life on my play, writing down everything that comes to mind just to finish quickly and be off. I tried to convince myself I was having another big moment, lying to my face and openly deceiving myself while scribbling away as though there was no need to look for the right words. That's good! That's a real find! I whispered every so often, just get it down! Eventually, however, my most recent lines of dialogue began to sound suspicious to me: they contrasted too sharply with the dialogue in the early scenes. Besides, there wasn't the slightest tinge of the Middle Ages about the monk's words. I break my pencil between my teeth, jump up, tear my manuscript to bits, every single sheet, toss my hat in the gutter and trample it. ‘I'm lost,’ I whisper to myself. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I'm lost!’ I say nothing except these words as I stand there trampling my hat.

(Hamsun, p. 175-6)

The passage expresses the anguish which accompanies the revisionary process, but the narrator has achieved what he set out to achieve in the opening movements of the novel: the journey has taken him from a non-committed space to a committed one. Regardless of what he has done to the manuscript, he has finally entered the terrain of the writer and the experiences coterminous with it. It is not unusual, then, for his last wandering to be towards the pier where he asks the captain of the Copégoro if he can use a deck-hand. The captain says yes, yet another peripety, and the novel ends with ‘Once out in the fjord I straightened up, wet with fever and fatigue, looked in toward the shore and said goodbye for now to the city, to Kristiania, where the windows shone so brightly in every home’ (Hamsun, p. 182).

The discussion of the novel has revolved around the notions of peripatetics and peripety; however, there are some very interesting things about this co-mingling of Aristotelian philosophizing, the manner of its presentation and the way in which we find the narrator wandering in philosophical, spiritual and topographic ways. In a sense, the whole notion of peripatus, even beginning with Aristotle, deals with ‘quest’ and quests, all quests, have a number of things in common all of which pertain to the notion of movement, of wandering: that is, the movements of separation, initiation, and return. These movements can be seen in Hunger as well as in other rites of passage on both spiritual and intellectual levels. Though there are certain places the narrator visits more frequently than others, he is on a journey, a peripatetic journey, and, like all homeless people, exists for the purpose of walking. Being ambulatory gives them some significance. They have a purpose for being since they are walking to somewhere, purposefully. Their days are measured by their walking and in that walking there is some substance to their lives. Like Aristotle, ‘Tangen,’ constantly philosophizes while he walks, while he sits, while he wanders. His thoughts are truly philosophical thoughts, thoughts that often escape the boundaries of logical, reasonable thoughts, but are none the less philosophical. It is only when he rests and writes that he can synthesize what he has been thinking about. Though Hamsun declines to acknowledge the work is ‘a novel’, it is, arguably, one of his best works since it deals forthrightly with the demonic nature of writing, the writing process, the ‘hunger’ of writing and the anguish of writing under duress.

The peripatetic and peripeteic nature of the narrator's quest can best be seen in relation to the routes taken and the reward given for such. By the beginning of Part III one sees how Hamsun has ‘intentionally’ fashioned the narrative as being ‘not a novel’. Part I deals primarily with the narrator's wanderings ending with the peripety of ten kroner; Part II continues, after a two-week respite, with the peripatetic hero essentially repeating the same yet different experiences he had in Part I with the peripety of five kroner; Part III begins in an iterative manner with ‘a week went by in joy and gladness’ (Hamsun, p. 91) and continues in the fashion established in Parts I and II (i.e. wandering, philosophizing, wandering, writing, wandering) the main difference being he spends considerably more time writing. ‘I toiled … left’ (pp. 91-2). In Part IV the narrator continues his writing as his situation has improved. The financial problems with his landlady are alleviated with a peripety of ten kroner which allows him to settle up with the landlady, end the journey and begin another. Even when he has given up his ten kroner to his landlady, he is saved again at the end of the novel by the captain, thus closing the quest. From the initial separation in which we find the narrator, through the initiation which constitutes the novel itself, to his final departure and return, the narrator has experienced the suffering of growth through the prevailing notions of peripatetics and peripety finally resulting in the recognition that his life's work is his words and the facilitation of them.

ADDENDUM

The addendum gives a detailed account of the narrator's peripatetic movements and the accompanying peripety.

PART I

As the quest commences, the ‘separation’ has already been established as the journey begins in a place other than his home. The entire novel deals with his ‘initiation’ into the role of ‘writer’.

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—DAY ONE

POINT OF DEPARTURE: HIS ATTIC ROOM

• Wanders a nameless street
• Arcades
• Wanders nameless streets
• Grænsen Street
• Palace Park
• Pilestrædet Lane
• Palace Hill
• Pascha's Bookstore
• Cisler's Music Store
• University Street
• St Olaf Place
• Side street
• Karl Johan Street
• University
• Palace Hill
• The Students' Promenade
• Wanders down nameless streets
• Returns to his room

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—DAY TWO

POINT OF DEPARTURE: HIS ATTIC ROOM

• Wanders nameless streets
• Semb's
• Stortorvet Square
• Newspaper office
• Grænsen Street
• Karl Johan Street
• Our Saviour's Cemetery near the chapel
• Aker Street
• Ullevaal Road
• St. Hanshaugen
• Sagene section
• Empty lots and cultivated fields
• Wanders a nameless country road
• St. Hanshaugen
• Newspaper office
• Semb's
• Kirke Street
• Ingebret's
• Nameless theatre
• Lodge Building
• Water and the Fortress
• Haegdehaugen section (in memory)
• Karl Johan Street
• Storting
• Tordenskjold Street
• Wanders nameless streets
• University clock
• Haegdehaugen area
• Majorstuen
• Bogstad Woods
• Falls asleep there

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—DAY THREE

POINT OF DEPARTURE: BOGSTAD WOODS

• The Steam Kitchen
• Jærnbanetorvet Square
• Grønlandsleret Street
• Møller Street
• Stortorvet Square
• Newspaper office
• The Arcades
• Christ's Cemetery
• Oplandske Café
• Torv Street
• Between the church and the Arcades
• Attic room

PERIPETY: TEN KRONER

END PART I

PART II

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY:—TWO WEEKS LATER

Point of Departure: Cemetery

• Wanders aimlessly
• City Jail
• Harbour
• Jærnbane Pier
• Nameless streets
• City Jail

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—NEXT DAY

POINT OF DEPARTURE: CITY JAIL

• Youngstorvet Square
• Home
• Newspaper office
• Homansbyen section
• Toldbod Street
• Bernt Anker Street No. 10
• Wanders nameless streets
• Jærnbanetorvet Square/Clock at Our Saviour's
• Jaernbane Pier
• Newspaper office
• Pilestaedet Lane
• Fire station
• Pascha's Bookstore
• Pastor Levion's
• Stortorvet Square
• Home
• Stener Street
• Wanders nameless streets
• Church of Our Saviour
• Wanders nameless streets
• Bakery
• Ropewalk
• Cisler's Music Store
• Wanders nameless streets
• Yarn Store
• Wanders nameless streets
• Church of Our Saviour
• Wanders nameless streets
• Pawnbroker

PERIPETY: TEN KRONER

END PART II

PART III

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—A WEEK WENT BY

POINT OF DEPARTURE: HIS ROOM

• Newspaper office
• Several evenings pass
• Room
• Wanders nameless streets
• Oplandske Café
• Palace
• Karl Johan Street
• Grand Hotel
• Blomquist's entranceway
• Storting Place
• Returns home
• Wanders nameless streets
• Dry goods store

PERIPETY: FIVE KRONER

• Storgaten Way; eats
• Wanders nameless streets; vomits
• Café
• Home
• Walks woman home
• St. Olaf Place

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—NEXT DAY

POINT OF DEPARTURE: HIS ROOM

• Clothing stalls
• Stortorvet Square
• Elephant Pharmacy
• Grænsen Street
• Storting Place
• 37 Ullevaal Road
• 11 Tomte Street
• Vognmand Street
• Grønland section
• Wanders nameless streets
• His room

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—NEXT DAY

POINT OF DEPARTURE: HIS ROOM

• Torv Street
• Arcades
• Smiths' Passage
• Youngsbakken Lane
• Jaernbane Pier
• Jaernbanetorvet Square
• Havn Street

PERIPETY: TEN KRONER

• Wanders nameless streets
• 11 Tomte Street

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—TUESDAY

POINT OF DEPARTURE: TOMTE STREET

• 2 St Olaf Place
• Karl Johan Street
• University Street
• 2 St Olaf Place

END PART III

PART IV

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—MANY WEEKS LATER

POINT OF DEPARTURE: ROOM IN VATERLAN

• Stays in his room

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—A FEW DAYS WENT BY

POINT OF DEPARTURE: HIS ROOM

• Drammen Road
• Karl Johan Street near Jaernbanetorvet Square
• His room

PERIPATETIC JOURNEY—NEXT DAY

POINT OF DEPARTURE: HIS ROOM

• Kirke Street
• Fortress
• Docks
• His room
• Peripety: Ten kroner
• Tomte St and Jaernbanetorvet Square
• Wanders nameless streets
• Royal Hotel
• Arcades
• Our Saviour's
• Vognmand Street
• Jaernbane Pier

PERIPETY: JOB ABOARD THE COPéGORO

When one breaks down the parts into their individual journeys, one finds the following:

• Part I 56 areas mentioned plus nameless streets
• Part II 27 areas mentioned plus nameless streets
• Part III 39 areas mentioned plus nameless streets
• Part IV 13 areas mentioned plus nameless streets

One might think that as the novel progresses, the narrator would minimize his wanderings and, in fact, the numbers do decrease from Part I to Part II, increase slightly in Part III and dramatically decrease by Part IV. By Part IV, the narrator has, in a way, become initiated into that ‘writer's space’ which he has longed to find throughout the novel. By virtue of finding that space, the need to wander diminishes. Once he has found his ‘calling’, the narrator can then embark on another journey, hence the decrease in interest in the surroundings and the eventual departure from Kristiania. But be that as it may, the narrator rarely wanders far from the centre of the city. The included map (circa 1909) of Kristiania, indicates that the narrator's wanderings were well within a defined area of circumscription. The geometric space within which the narrator chooses to isolate himself, is not unlike the geometric space of the novel. Just as the narrator wanders from place to place within the city, apparently with no other motive but to wander, the narrative displaces a linear kind of narrative in favour of a kind of narrative that, too, wanders.

Works Cited

Chadbourne, Richard M., Ernest Renan. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1968.

Ferguson, Robert, Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987.

Grayeff, Felix, Aristotle and His School. London: Gerald Duckworth & Company, 1974.

Hamsun, Knut, Hunger. Trans. Sverre Lyngstad. Edinburgh: Rebel, Canongate Books Ltd, 1996.

Kant, Immanuel, The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God. Trans. and Introduction by Gordon Treash. New York: Abaris Books, 1979.

Kant, Immanuel, The Essential Kant. Introduction by Arnulf Zweig (ed.). New York: New American Library, 1970.

Naess, Harald and McFarlane, James, Knut Hamsun: Selected Letters, Volume I, 1879-98. Norwich: Norvik Press, 1990.