Produced by Eric Eldred, Robert Connal
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
SHALLOW SOIL
BY
KNUT HAMSUN
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE NORWEGIAN BY
CARL CHRISTIAN HYLLESTED
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
In the autumn of 1888 a Danish magazine published a few chapters of anautobiographical novel which instantly created the greatest stir inliterary circles throughout Europe. At that time Ibsen, Björnson, Brandes,Strindberg, and other Scandinavian writers were at the height of theircosmopolitan fame, and it was only natural that the reading world shouldkeep in close touch with the literary production of the North. But eventhe professional star-gazers, who maintained a vigilant watch on northernskies, had never come across the name of Knut Hamsun. He was unknown;whatever slight attention his earlier struggles for recognition may haveattracted was long ago forgotten. And now he blazed forth overnight, withmeteoric suddenness, with a strange, fantastic, intense brilliance whichcould only emanate from a star of the first magnitude.
Sudden as was Hamsun's recognition, however, it has proved lasting. Thestory of his rise from obscurity to fame is one of absorbing interest.Behind that hour of triumph lay a long and bitter struggle, weary years ofstriving, of constant and courageous battle with a destiny that strewedhis path with disappointments and defeats, overwhelming him withadversities that would have swamped a genius of less energy and realpower.
Knut Hamsun began life in one of the deep Norwegian valleys familiar toEnglish readers through Björnson's earlier stories. He was born in August,1860. When he was four years old his poverty-stricken parents sent him toan uncle, a stern, unlovely man who made his home on one of the LofotenIslands—that "Drama in Granite" which Norway's rugged coast-line flingsfar into the Arctic night. Here he grew up, a taciturn, peculiar lad,inured to hardship and danger, in close communion with nature; dreamingthrough the endless northern twilight, revelling through the brief intensesummer, surrounded by influences and by an atmosphere which later were togive to his production its strange, mystical colouring, itspendulum-swings from extreme to extreme.
At seventeen he was apprenticed to a cobbler, and while working at histrade he wrote and, at the cost of no one knows what sacrifices, savedenough money to have his first literary efforts printed and published.They consisted of a long, fantastic poem and a novel, "Björger"—thelatter a grotesque conglomeration of intense self-analytical studies.These attracted far less attention than they really deserved. However, thecobbler's bench saw no more of Knut Hamsun.
During the next twelve years he led the life of a rover, but a rover witha fixed purpose from which he never swerved. First he turned his facetoward Christiania, the capital and the intellectual centre of thecountry; and in order to get there he worked at anything that offereditself. He was a longshoreman on Bodö's docks, a road-labourer, alumberjack in the mountains; a private tutor and court messenger. Finallyhe reached the metropolis and enrolled as a student at the university. Butthe gaunt, raw-boned youth, unpractical and improvident, overbearing ofmanner, passionately independent in thought and conduct, failed utterly inhis attempts to realise whatever ambitions he had cherished. So it washardly strange that this the first chapter of his Odyssey should end inthe steerage of an American-bound e