But no one that I can recall has equalled Hamsun
in his merciless denunciation of the very principle of urbanity. The
truth of it seems to be that Hamsun's pilgrimage to the bee hives where
modern humanity clusters typically, was an essential violation of
something within himself that mattered even more than his literary
ambition to his soul's integrity. Perhaps, if I am right, he is the
first genuine peasant who has risen to such artistic mastery, reaching
its ultimate heights through a belated recognition of his own proper
settings. Hamsun was sixty when he wrote "Growth of the Soil." It is the
first work in which he celebrates the life of the open country for its
own sake, and not merely as a contrast to the artificiality and
selfishness of the cities. It was written, too, after he had definitely
withdrawn himself from the gathering places of the writers and the
artists to give an equal share of his time and attention to the tilling
of the soil that was at last his own. It is the harvest of his ultimate
self-discovery.
The various phases of his campaign against city life are also
interesting and illuminating. Early in his career as a writer he tried
an open attack in full force by a couple of novels, "Shallow Soil" and
"Editor Lynge", dealing sarcastically with the literary Bohemia of the
Norwegian capital.
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