Hunger: (Norwegian: Sult) - Knut Hamsun's Struggle for Survival: Experiencing Hunger in the Norwegian Novel by Hamsun Knut

Author:Hamsun, Knut [Hamsun, Knut]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics, Philosophy, General Fiction
ISBN: 9789390101580
Amazon: B01MY0GA2C
Goodreads: 34363755
Publisher: Prabhat Prakashan
Published: 1890-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Part Four

Winter had come, a raw and wet winter with hardly any snow, a dark and foggy everlasting night without a single fresh gust of wind all week long. The street lamps were lit almost all day, and yet people kept running into one another in the fog. All sounds, the peal of the church bells, the harness bells on the cab horses, people’s voices, the hoofbeats – everything came through so muffled in the heavy air, as though it was buried. Week after week went by and the weather remained the same.

I was still staying down in the Vaterland section.

I became more and more attached to this tavern, this rooming house for travellers, where I had been allowed to stay despite being so down-and-out. My money had been used up long ago, but I continued to come and go in the house, as if I were entitled to it and belonged there. The landlady hadn’t said a word yet, but it worried me nonetheless that I couldn’t pay her. Three weeks went by in this way.

I had resumed my writing several days ago, but I was no longer able to come up with anything I was satisfied with; I had no luck at all any more, though I worked very hard and kept trying at all times. It was no use whatever I tried, my luck was gone.

I was sitting in a room on the second floor, the best guest room, when I made these attempts. I had been left undisturbed up there since that first evening, when I had money and could pay up. I kept hoping all along I might finally put together an article about something or other, so I could pay for my room and whatever else I owed; that was why I was working so hard. In particular, I had started a piece for which I had high expectations, an allegory about a fire in a bookshop, a profound idea that I would take the utmost pains to work out and bring to the ‘Commander’ as an installment on my debt. Then the ‘Commander’ would realise he had helped a real talent this time; I had no doubt he would realise that, I just had to wait for the inspiration to come. And why shouldn’t the inspiration come, even very soon? There was nothing the matter with me any more; I got a little food from my landlady every day, a few sandwiches morning and evening, and my nervousness was all but gone. I no longer had rags around my hands when I wrote, and I could look down into the street from my second-floor windows without getting dizzy. I was doing much better in every way, and I was actually beginning to wonder why I hadn’t finished my allegory yet. I couldn’t understand what the explanation was.

One day I was at last to get an inkling of how weak I had really become, how sluggishly and ineptly my brain was working. That day my landlady came upstairs with a bill which she asked me to look at.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.