Knut Hamsun’s ‘Hunger’ : A Psychological Whirlpool (Book Review)
I first got inspired to read Hamsun when, in one of Bukowski’s semi-autobiographical prose, he mentioned him as the world’s greatest writer. Now, even if the sincerity of his opinion was only as true as the rest of his fictional expeditions, I had realized that I had to read Hamsun.
I decided to start with ‘Hunger’.
You get one thing clear pretty early on. That the theme, setting, plot, and nearly everything else in the book is the protagonist’s mind. Make no mistake, he suffers as much from his own thoughts as from poverty and hunger.
The memoir is a never-ending battle between projection and reality, a constant search for approbation and self-worth, and the consequential misery heightened by a brutal self-awareness.
I would like to talk about five features of the book that struck a chord with my constitution, and why I think you should read the book too. No spoilers…for this plotless masterpiece cannot be spoiled.
1. THE CRITIC WITHIN
The whole novel could be one long stream of consciousness, with incidents in the external world only adding material for our hero’s soliloquy. No wonder Hamsun inspired a whole generation of modernists and post-modernists, stalwarts like Hemingway and Miller to name a few.
There is a persistent sense of conflict in our hero’s meditations, blurring the lines between the rational and the irrational. Reason becomes just another superstitious belief, which tunes its own endless faith of thoughts after thoughts, a faculty abused to the point of addiction. Hamsun aptly portrays the eternal human predicament, the tension between the ‘what is' and the ‘what should be’, without flirting either with boring philosophy or casual fiction.
Anyone looking for a real glimpse at this inner inquisitor needs only to watch author David Foster Wallace’s interview with Charlie Rose and see him grimacing with disgust and self-reproach at his own utterances. Ten more of such miserable years and he finally ends it all with a bullet to the head.
2. THE GRADUAL MORAL BURNOUT
Dostoevsky called crime a protest against the abnormality of the social organization. And no wonder, within a space of a few weeks, we witness our hero throwing all his scruples to the bin one by one when confronted with a concrete human drive, namely, hunger.
The guilt-ridden misery he endures after his shameful acts to attain food is more nauseating than the bile that comes out of him. His case of indigestion is both clinical and intellectual.
Still, he stoops lower every time he has a pang of hunger. He learns to justify the acts of stealing, cheating, lying, threatening, and gradually gets accustomed to his moral corruption.
3. A KILLER PRIDE
The protagonist is disoriented, penniless, and shabby. Meanwhile, he could also be the most egoistic person in town. His sense of pride stems out of his extraordinary intelligence, or rather the most refined stupidity disguised as intelligence. And it is this solipsistic pride that fuels his inner monologues; making him insecure, emotionally vulnerable, and frustratingly sad.
Why me, he keeps asking. His self esteem see-saws. He refuses food to protect his image. He gives his last penny away to beggars to conform to his own expectations. He feels only contempt for the person who gives him alms. An excerpt of his defense of this condition :
…..my poverty had, in that degree, sharpened certain powers in me, so that they caused me unpleasantness. A poor intelligent man is a far nicer observer than the rich intelligent man. He is quick of hearing and sensitive, his soul bears the sears of fire.
4. ‘YLAJALI'
Considered to be the equal of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in subtleness, Hamsun’s portrayal of love too, could be similar to the former’s description as ‘the right to moral tyranny and subjugation’. No one can make you feel as naked as the person you have dressed up for. No wonder we see so many of the former’s characters falling for prostitutes, seeking out moral dominance.
‘Ylajali' is the conceptual metamorphosis of our hero’s vulnerabilities. Love only accentuates his self-consciousness. He constantly feels judged, inferior, and in persistent doubt of his self worth.
Here I stood before a young lady dirty, ragged, torn, disfigured by hunger and only half-clad, it was enough to make one sink to the earth.
“…..considering all things you ought not to walk with me. I disgrace you right under everyone’s eyes, even if with just my clothes….”
5. THE DETERMINSTIC MUSE AKA WRITER’S BLOCK
The protagonist indulges in absurd whims, subtle lies, silly humor, irrational hunches, and endless caprice throughout the length of the novel.
When the muse does work through him, he creates people, names, characters and concepts all ready to ‘crush pitiably some of Kant’s sophistries’. At other times, he becomes incapable of putting a single word down on paper even if his life depends on it.
Nothing debunks the concept of free will as art does. Words, images, and ideas float in a colloidal soup of cosmic consciousness and every artist pulls his share via his own environment-shaped receptacles. Creativity becomes just another permutation.
‘Hunger’ is a theatre of a perpetually nomadic psychic dance, a self-modulating pendulum whose each wiping sway itself creates the drive to bring it back and start all over again, while leaving, in the meanwhile, waves of paranoia along its path.
All the facets above are things that reacted with me. There are a million other nuances that makes this book as good as life.
So tell me,
On what psychological levels did the book end up affecting you?
P.S. — You can also check out this publication for more stream-of-consciousness works of fiction and poems by yours truly:
