Oslo – Hunger (Sult)
The opening commemorative event of the Knut Hamsun 150th anniversary of 2009 will take place in the capital on 19 February, the day of the author’s death. Hamsun’s breakthrough novel Hunger (Sult, 1890), set in the city then known as Kristiania, provides the framework for the event. Below is a brief description by Professor Per Thomas Andersen of the position of the work in the literary landscape.
by Per Thomas Andersen
Hunger was adapted for the cinema in 1966. Director: Henning Carlsen. Still photograph: Jesper Høm. Here: illustration from new edition, 1997. Poster courtesy of the National Library of Norway (Nasjonalbiblioteket). Reproduced with permission of Henning Carlsen.
With the novel Hunger, Knut Hamsun carved out a name for himself in world literature. As long as there is a concept of an international canon of significant books, Hamsun will be one of the few Norwegian authors who can be said to belong there. Hunger has given him this position, more than any other work, as a result of its artistic originality and the manner in which it depicts the human subject, a clear precursor of modernism. In its depiction of sensitivities and human consciousness, Hunger goes beyond the bounds of the traditional realistic novel with respect to both language and composition, and as a result it has been a continuous source of inspiration for a wide number of authors all over the world.
______
Per Thomas Andersen is Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Oslo.
About the commemorative event i Oslo February 19 2009:"Hunger and soup"
Pictures from "Hunger and soup" (Texts in norwegian only)
Article about the event "Hunger and soup" (In norwegian only)
