They were, on the whole, failures--artistically
rather than commercially. They are among his poorest books. The attack
was never repeated in that form. He retired to the country, so to speak,
and tried from there to strike at what he could reach of the ever
expanding, ever devouring city. After that the city, like the sea, is
always found in the distance. One feels it without ever seeing it.
There is fear as well as hatred in his treatment of it.
In the country it is represented not so much by the store, which, after
all, fills an unmistakable need on the part of the rural population, as
by the representatives of the various professions. For these Hamsun
entertains a hostile feeling hardly less marked than that bestowed on
their place of origin, whither, to his openly declared disgust, they are
always longing. It does not matter whether they are ministers or actors,
lawyers or doctors--they are all tarred with the same brush. Their
common characteristic is their rootlessness. They have no real home,
because to Hamsun a home is unthinkable apart from a space of soil
possessed in continuity by successive generations. They are always
despising the surroundings in which they find themselves temporarily,
and their chief claim to distinction is a genuine or pretended knowledge
of life on a large scale.
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