As a boy of eighteen, when working in a tiny coast town as a cobbler's
apprentice, he ventured upon his first literary endeavors and actually
managed to get two volumes printed at his own cost. The art of writing
was in his blood, exercising a call and a command that must have been
felt as a pain at times, and as a consecration at other times. Books
and writing were connected with the city. Perhaps the hatred that later
days developed, had its roots in a thwarted passion. Even in the little
community where his first scribblings reached print he must have felt
himself in urban surroundings, and perhaps those first crude volumes
drew upon him laughter and scorn that his sensitive soul never forgot.
If something of the kind happened, the seed thus sown was nourished
plentifully afterwards, when, as a young man, Hamsun pitted his
ambitions against the indifference first of Christiania and then of
Chicago. The result was a defeat that seemed the more bitter because it
looked like punishment incurred by straying after false gods.
Others have suffered in the same way, although, being less rigidly
themselves, they may not, like Hamsun, have taken a perverse pleasure in
driving home the point of the agony. Others have thought and said harsh
things of the cities.
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