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Knut Hamsun------Dreamer and
Conqueror
By Wang Yi
PKU NEWS 2004—11—15
http://ennews.pku.edu.cn/news.php?s=100655443
Peking University, Beijing, Nov 15th, 2004: Mr. Ingar Sletten Kolloen, a Norwegian
writer who wrote the biography of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1920) winner,
Norwegian famous writer Knut Hamsun, delivered a lecture on ―Knut
Hamsun------Dreamer and Conqueror‖ at the Institution of World Literature at Peking
University this afternoon.
Throughout the lecture, Mr. Kolloen‘s humorous way of talking brought to the
audience a vivid picture of Knut Hamsun and his literature production. About his
homeland, he first said that Norway was a country that not only produce fish and oil
but also literature, for which Henrik Ibsen was most widely known among Chinese
readers. However, there is another very important Norwegian writer in world
literature and also the Nobel Prize winner------Knut Hamsun.
Mr. Kolloen pointed out that Knut Hamsun had been from the very beginning
attracted by the inherent antinomy and contradiction of human being, which is also a
dominant character of Hamsun himself. ―He is a self-contradictory, specious,
reactionary, realism writer.‖ He also listed out the three important terms involved in
Hamsun‘s works: uprooting------the process of many Norwegians‘ emigration to
America is just like being uprooted from their homeland and taking root in an whole
new environment; leaving one‘s native place------referring to the farmers moving from
countries to cities and the struggle afterwards; fighting for sex discrimination------the
explosive relationship between men and women and the pressure it brings. It‘s
interesting to find that most of Hamsun‘s stories end in strong women‘s victories over
men.
The The Hunger, Mysteries, Pan are three great works that establish Hamsun as a
great writer of Norwegian literature as well as world literature. His typical writing
styles and techniques can be found in them, such as subjective intuition,
impressionism, flashback. Hamsun probes into the complexity of consciousness and
sub-consciousness, the confliction in characters by his sensitiveness of language,
thorough and careful study and isolated disposition.
Despite his great achievement in literature, Mr. Kolloen said, Charged with treason
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