The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1920-12-10
KNUT HAMSUN
IS A QUEER ONE
Norwegian Receives Today
$4,000 Nobel Prize for
Literature
IS GREAT RECLUSE
STUNNING PEOPLE

Attempts 10 Starve Himself After Re-
turn to Native Land frOm America -
Experience Gave Foundation for Fa-
nous Sketch. Hunger.
NEW YORK, Dec. l0.-Knut Ham
sun, of Larvik, Norway, former Chicago
street car motorman, who today receives
the $4,000 Nobel prize tor literature, has
had as adventurous a career as ever be-
fell any of his Viking forefathers.
Fifty-year-old poet mystic and r~ecluse,
at the height of his fame, Hamsun six
months ago was practically unknown out
side of Scandinavia. He was born in Gull
brandstal on Aug. f, 1860 and while work
ing as a young shoemaker apprentice
wrote some little poems which showed
him to possess Il most original and pc
culiar style.
Young Hamsun did not take kindly to
pegging soIes and, longing for adventure,
shipped as a cabin boy at Christiania and
came to the United States. Subsequently
he became u miner, clerk in a store and
Il Chicago mOtOrman. Fellow country
men who knew him in America at that
sketches and poems and showed marked
tendencies toward atheism and anar-
chism. Stricken with what he believed
to be a fatal illness Hamsun abandoned
his radical ideas and, for d short time,
pursued the study of religious mysticism
The authors bitter experiences in Am
erica seem to have schooled him for the
famous man of letters he was later to be-
come. Always hOmesick for his native
land he finally reached Copenhagen, pen
niless and alone. So distressing was his
plight that he found lodgings i'll a garnet
and sought to starve himself to death.
He longed 70 die anI yet the instinct for
self-preservation forbade his entering
the great unknown. 1t was during
this great h~fe-and-death struggle that
Hamsun wrote his now wOrld-renOwned
sketch entitled Hunger which, printed N
a Danish paper, placed its author IN the
first rank of Scandinavian writers.
Later Hamsun wrote a novel OF the
same title. Hunger, which proved to be
another mastery and impressive anaIy-
sis Of the human soul. Success came to
him over night, as 1t WERE, and the next
morning S~candinavlans were acctalmlng
him as their greatest living poet. In
/ spite of this adulation, Hamsun held hin
self aloOf from society and tired to eS-
cape all worldly honors. He sought re-
tirement in a hut in the forest near Gul-
brandstal and when admirers tried TO
find him there he went further north to
the almost inaccessible little farm where
he had lived as a child.
Among the notable contributions to
literature by this Norwegian genius are
his novels entitled Mysteries. Editor
LANCE and the love story called Pan.
Other writings are his brisk Honor to
the Young. a defiance of old age; his &c
centric work, 4 Wanderer Plays With a
Sardine. his satire OF the drama Gotten
by the Devil; the %triOlogy At the Door
Of the Wealthy; Queen Tamara. said to
he his best drama and Munken Nendt,
a picture Of the life of a debauched theol-
Hamsun, in all his writings for the
thcater. it it said, has shown contempt
of dramatic art and technique. His nov
els have been called IAN ola pOdrida Of
rude realism. dreamy mysticism and I'M
pulsive sentiment" He has been ac-
credited with a fine sense Of phantasy
and a penetrating intellect in exposing
the weaknesses of modern life.