Growth of the Soil

It’s hard to understand different types of human consciousness. If it was easy we’d all be experts in Hegel.But it’s undeniable that consciousness has changed as society has become more literate and technological and governments have become more free.While it’s possible to access some of the earliest civilizations’ kinds of consciousness—one need only, for example, read the Hebrew Bible—Growth of the Soil is at its finest when it portrays what life was like for a farmer and his wife settling untilled land in the far northern part of Norway during the late nineteenth century.Knut Hamsun actually thought that the solution to the problems of the twentieth century was a return to this way of life but that lack of foresight doesn’t diminish from the power of the novel. As it progresses, the nineteenth century catches up with the farmer and one sees the contrast between modern urban life and the more staid ways of the country.To put its themes into words would, unfortunately, be to engage in a number of cliches. But I can guarantee that any reader will come away with a new appreciation for what the first settlers were like—their manners, customs and ways of thinking.I don’t mean to suggest this is an exercise in cultural anthropology. With a slow but steady pace, mirroring the growth of the tilled land, Hamsun introduces a panoply of characters from the Lutheran villages nearby as well as fellow farmers in the Arctic Circle’s wilderness. And these characters have adventures and dilemmas ranging from the tragic to the comical. You couldn’t really even describe a way of life without the necessary drama of human living.But it’s perennial interests comes, not from a great sense of the landscape—which actually is barely described, not from the story arcs and plot twists—though there are many, but from the insight into the manner in which almost all human beings used to live and which turned out to be on the point of almost vanishing (at least in Europe). Because of this unique perspective, I would argue that Growth of the Soil is almost a must read to fellow explorers of the human condition.

Growth of the soil Knut Hamsun (Pedersen)The translator gives us a lovely paean to the story: “The story is epic in its magnitude, in its calm, steady progress and unhurrying rhythm, in its vast and intimate humanity. The author looks upon his characters with a great, all-tolerant” eye.And the translator is right about the unhurrying rhythm – it’s a 200-page story told in 350 pages. The story line, the writing style, the characters are stolid: slow-moving but substantial in their depth. In fact, the slow, rhythmic movement of the prose is part of the attractiveness of the writing—the unchanging world of agriculture and of Isak himself: “Look! the tiny grains that are to take life and grow, shoot up into ears, and give more corn again; so it is throughout all the earth where corn is sown. Palestine, America, the valleys of Norway itself—a great wide world, and here is Isak, a tiny speck in the midst of it all, a sower. Little showers of corn flung out fanwise from his hand; a kindly clouded sky, with a promise of the faintest little misty rain.”Part of the slowness is that Hamsun is writing from the point of view of a narrator who rarely sees into his characters. The most conversation we get out of Isak is the occasional “Ha.” As a Minnesotan, I understand this, since we have a lot of Norwegians in our population. We look to the Germans in the southern half of the state for humor and laissez-faire insouciance.Usually, stories have some sort of character arc that animate their plots and draw the reader along. This one has an interesting twist, which I guess one might call the environment arc. The farm, to some degree the people involved with it change and grow, but Isak is a rock-solid constant, “A tiller of the ground, body and soul; a worker on the land without respite. A ghost risen out of the past to point the future, a man from the earliest days of cultivation, a settler in the wilds, nine hundred years old, and, withal, a man of the day.” That is lovely writing, but it also makes for a great deal of repetition and not much movement. Stolid.It was interesting to read, marvelous in some parts, soporific in others.

Published in 1917 and instantly recognized as a masterpiece 'Growth of the Soil' marked the high point of Knut Hamsun's literary career.The plot of the novel is at once simple, sublime, elemental and transcendental, for it is the story of creation. A man, Isak, comes to an uninhabited part of Norway. In this cold, forbidding place he makes his covenant with the land. He is joined by Inger: his wife, partner and co-creator. Isak has a visceral bond with the earth and through sheer physical strength and will he creates a home, a homestead and in time a community of fellow settlers who come in his wake. Through the viscissitudes of life, it's flourishes and disappointments Isak never breaks his covenant. He tends to the earth, his animals and they, unfailingly, tend to him. For Isak the soil is not a means to get food or clothing, his relationship with the soil is primordial. He farms because he must, not only because he needs. The covenant between man and earth is ancient, hallowed, mystical and Isak sustains it.The novel is pastoral and goes into  considerable detail about the life on a farm. Hamsun's experience working as afarm hand lends authenticity while his consummate skill makes a three page description of cowshed buildinga gripping read.The novel is didactic in tone, without being overbearing or preachy. It covers multiple themes, as is wont, in a story of biblical aspirations.  The primary theme is the relation of man and nature. Isak is a simple man, a few passage of Psalms and stories from the Bible being the sum total of his formal education. He is a man of few words, fewer emotions and of simple certainties. He works the earth and the earth gives him all he needs. Sometimes the weather is inclement but Isak is judicious and the Lord rewards him with a bumper harvest the next year. He has faith, patience, strength, a companion: Inger, and that is enough.For people like me, who live in a city but are only one generation removed from a pastoral life,reading the book is to face a sense of loss, of a bond having been irrevocably severed. It brings to mind this passage from VS Naipaul's India : A Wounded Civilization"... the custom was possible only with an open fireplace. To have to give up the custom was to abjure a link with the earth and the antiquity of earth, of the beginning of things. ... So that awe in the presence of the earth and the universe was something to be rediscovered later, by other means"The corrupting influence of the City is the other major theme of the novel. This does seem overdone at times. Inger is arrested for infanticide and spends five years in prison. The prison is progressive and they teach her sewing, provide education and perform surgery on her harelip yet the affectations of City, it's pretensions and superfluous nature leave a mark on Inger. Everyone who comes from the city or spends time there is worse for it. From Isak's son Eleseus (a rather overdone caricature of Hamsun himself), his neighbour Brede and even his benefactor Giessler all show flaws of character. The City is a necessary evil, it is parasitic upon the village. This view of the City isnt terribly original or nuanced and is the one weak point of the book.The sacred union of man and wife, the strength of this bond is a recurring theme. Isak has Inger and she shares his world, nurtures it. She gives him a family, a purpose and children. Aksel, a later settler as hardworking as Isak, lacks a wife and his farm never rises above providing for bare necessities. Aksel looks at a wife in terms of a utilitarian transaction of recruiting a co-worker while Isak's union with Inger has a sense of providence. As far as love stories go it is hard to top Hamsun's narration: "They entered the hut, ate of her food and drank his goat milk; then they made coffee. They lingered pleasantly over their coffee before going to bed. At night he lay feeling greedy for her and took her.In the morning she didn't leave, nor did she leave the rest of the day, but made herself useful, milked the goats and scrubbed the pots with fine sand. She never left. Inger was her name, Isak his. "Another aspect of the novel which, for an Indian reader, would stand out is the supportive role of the State and its bureaucracy. Geissler, the sheriff, is supportive of Isak and helps him get a formal title to the land he has worked on, a fair price for the copper that is discovered in Isak's land. Geissler, a worldly wise man, knows that Isak, and people like him, are the true engines of civilization. Inger, in prison, recieves education, skills of a seamstress and a sense of self worth. This benign, welfare state is not without its flaws. As the remit of the State grows it invades the private and communal space of the settlers. The simple Christian morality of Psalms, embodied by Isak and Aksel, comes in conflict with the progressive ideas of the new bureaucracy. Hamsun shows the inevitable conflict and the hollowness of liberal ideas of progress. Deracinated officials, who succeed Geissler, try to impose liberal, enlightenment values onto an ancient tradition. Hamsun evokes this in the differential treatment of Inger and Barbro(the daughter of one of Isak's neighbor) at the hands of the State for the crime of infanticide. Inger is treated with sympathy, her crime was one of necessity, her remorse genuine but the scales of justice have to be balanced and she serves 5 years in prison, the minimum possible and is treated well. Barbro commits her crime a few years later, she does it to escape marriage, responsibility, never confesses and feels not a sliver of guilt. Yet the wife of the new sheriff, the paradigm of liberal progress, holds up Barbro as the emblematic victim and frames the murder of an infant as an act of freedom. Barbro is found not guilty. The scales have come unstuck.At the end of the novel we find Isak, still at work even as his prodigal strength begins to desert him with age. Inger is there, by his side and his younger son Sivert, a chip off the old block. They are happy, Isak knows the worth of what he has done. He has created a city; he was the first man, from his sweat and blood life has sprung forth. Hamsun encapsulates the meaning of his novel in this elegant passage"The settlers didn't make themselves suffer on account of goodies they hadn't got: art, newspapers, luxuries, politics were worth exactly as much as people were willing to pay for them, no more; the growth of the soil, on the other hand, had to be procured at any cost. It was the origin of all things, the only source."The book, a literary sensation, has had an eventful afterlife. Hamsun's support for Nazism has bedevilled his ouvre and no other book has suffered more than Growth of the Soil. After all it was the book Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, gave to German soldiers as they marched to conquer Europe. Heidegger, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, and a Nazi supporter recommended in 1926 that Hannah Arendt (his student and sometime lover) read Hamsun. I found this extremely interesting. In 1926 no one would have accused Heidegger or Hamsun of being proto Nazis / Fascists. Yet here we have a meeting of minds, Heidegger's attraction to Hamsun prefigures the dark turn both were about to take. Study of intellectual history is peppered with such Aha! moments.Isak is the Ubermensch of Maistre. 'Growth of the Soil' is a canonical work in every sense of the word. Read it we must, life itself depends on it.

Having read the first chapters of this book the modern reader may wonder how this work contributed to Knut Hamsun being awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. To that point the story is leisurely bland. The characters are distant and indistinctive, even Isak, the pioneering homesteader in the back of the woods, in his unwavering stoically optimistic determination to carve out and develop his own prosperous domain. Dialogue is stilted and scant. Isak's companion and wife to be, Inger, is hard working but sullen, argumentative and self deprecating.But the tale gains in stature as characterizations mature, more participants are introduced and unexpected events unfold. Through a crisis Inger's life changes drastically and leads to the blossoming of her creative ambitions and self-image. There is the never-do-well, scheming Brede; the kindly but evasive wheeler dealer Geissler; the naïve and trusting plodder, Aksel; the opportunistic, shifty and deceptive--to the very end--Barbro; the spoiled first born son, Eleseus, impractical and pretentious; the industrious, loyal and amiable second son, Sivert; the village's suffragette and socialite, Mrs Heyerdahl; the elder gossip but wise and prudently dependable Oline; the entrepreneurial but lazy Aaronsen; the seducing, happy and irresponsible vagabond Gustaf; and others.There is success and failure, contentment and depression, drama and contention which motivate the reader to go on to find the inhabitants of this parochial setting, in northern Norway about 1850-80, worthy of comparison with urban 21st century conflicts and compromises. Geissler is provided a significant stream of thought monologue at the end which undresses his customary unflappability. Infanticide is an underlying theme in much of this book and provides insight about how human life was then at times discarded out of expediency, just as many abortions today may take place for that same reason.Although I doubt this book would lead to a Nobel Prize today I think it is well worth the read for social, cultural, artistic and historical reasons. It is especially apt for those interested in the surprising relative complexity of primitive and "simple" rural life in the nineteenth century. As far as this Penguin 2007 edition is concerned, the new translation startled at times, using English modernisms which are out of place for the time period being described. But they are minor distractions. The book is very contemporarily readable although purists may prefer the more traditional translations.

I haven't read any Hamsun before - was intrigued by an article in the paper about his writing.Found this a most satisfying and fulfilling read. The characterization is perhaps the strongest feature - here are men and women hewn out of living rock; they possess a timeless truth. We see the effects of life experience, fortune and disappointment impact on each. There is tension between the basics of life (working hard on the land to fill your belly/soul) and the effects of "civilization" (detachment from the land) - my sense was that for every "advancement" Isak encountered to make life easier or profit greater - for example the arrival of the mowing machines- there was a diminishing of his true nature.The novel reads like it has been grafted onto something far older and deeper in the reader's psyche - Norse myth didn't seem far away - I kept thinking of the enigmatic Geissler character, who can make or break the lives of others at a whim, as a Trickster type being, popping up at times of his choosing. There's a strong moral component too, but even this is mutable - compare the treatment of infanticide as the years pass between Inger and Barbro's experiences. There's the sense of life being a cycle - both of the individual characters and of wider society.Thought provoking, well worth a read.

An absolute classic. On a par with ' Far From the Madding Crowd' by Thomas Hardy.The book chronicles the lives of country folk in late nineteenth century Norway and contrasts a deep rooted connection with the soil with the newly emerging shallow materialism and pomposity of urban life. Selfless sacrifce versus self importance and pretence. Humility versus egotism and the futility of human conceit.The acceptance and joy of human inconsequence provide Hamsun with a connection to the soil that is beyond spirituality.Add to this Hamsuns unique understanding of the human psyche and artful character development and you have a classic of modern literature.

This is a simply written but evocative story which relates how Isak, an honest and straightforward man, builds up his farm from scratch in the harsh mountains. As well as painting a picture of how back-breaking life must have been for the majority of the population in Norway, it also reveals the social attitudes of the time. I was so pleased that I took this with me on holiday to Norway: as I gawped at the awe-inspiring scenery, I was able to imagine Isak, his family, and neighbours, all toiling away on the slopes. It put everything into context.