Wanderers

Chapter 8 No.8

Word Count: 986 | Released on: 06/12/2017

arkable beauty, perhaps; but she had red lips, and a blue, girlish glance that made her pretty to see. Elischeba, Elisabeth-a child at the first dawn of life, wit

ut he was quiet and tame enough now, as well he might be-'tis nature's way. But some there are who would not follow nature's way, and be tamed; and how shall it

he way. I was still ashamed of the recollection. But then, at last, in the middle of the week, one of the maids came with a message

back upon the life of cities, and taken upon myself the guise of a servant, for all I was a man of parts, that could lay on water to a house. But whe

on that Sunday afternoon, but Fruen. She talked to me for quit

mething before we've done with it," said Fruen, with a ki

the shell off through the neck of a decanter, by thinning the ai

was really interesting," Fruen went on. "I don't understand t

're going to start on

g will that

n the man can come

rea

t, from earlier years; now and again she would glance at one sideway

and the common sort, and the brown. Here and there a toadstool thrust up its speckled top, flaming its red all unashamed. A wonderful thing! Here it is growing on the same spot as the edible sorts, fed by the same soil, given sun a

gger than a small-type comma, yet they could jump several thousand times their own length. Think of the strength of such a body in proportion to its size! There is a tiny spider here with its hinder part like a pale yellow pearl. And the pearl is so heavy that the creature has to clamber up a stalk of grass back downwards. When it comes upon an obstacle the pearl cannot pas

ool with me. He gave me a lesson out of Pontoppidan to learn, and now I'm to be heard. It

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Wanderers

Knut Hamsun Literature

“The Wanderer, which consists of two closely related novels, Under the Autumn Star and On Muted Strings, has been acclaimed as one of Knut Hamsun's finest works. The narrator, Knut Pedersen (Hamsun's real name), is an unsimple character in search of the simple life, which he hopes to attain by wandering round the Norwegian countryside doing such work as he can find. His quest is continually frustrated, not least by his susceptibility to the wives and daughters of successive employers. In Under the Autumn Star he joins forces first with Grindhusen, a man blessed with the faith that "something will turn up"; later with Lars Falkenberg, whose dubious talents include the tuning of pianos. Knut and Lars end up as workmen on the estate of a certain Captain Falkenberg (no relation), with whose wife each falls in love. In due course, Knut is laid off and, in futile pursuit of the woman with whom by now he is helplessly infatuated, eventually finds himself sucked back into the city he once fled. "A wanderer plays on muted strings," explains Knut, now six years older, "when he reaches the age of two score years and ten." Among this sequel's qualities is the poignancy with which it conveys that sense of aging. Both novels show Hamsun at the height of his powers: lyrical and passionate, ironic yet deeply humane, master of one of the most original prose styles in modern literature, brilliantly translated here by Oliver and Gunnvor Stallybrass.”