Hunger (Sverre Lyngstad 1998 Translation) by Knut Hamsun

Author:Knut Hamsun [Hamsun, Knut]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9781101144022
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 1890-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

A WEEK WENT BY in joy and gladness.

I was over the worst this time too. I had food every day, my courage rose, and I had more and more irons in the fire. I was working on three or four monographs, which picked my poor brain clean of every spark, every thought that arose in it, and I felt it was going better than before. My last article, which had cost me so much running around and given rise to so much hope, had already been returned by the editor, and I had destroyed it immediately, angry and insulted, without reading it afresh. In the future I would try another paper, in order to open up more opportunities for myself. At worst, if that didn’t help either, I had the ships to turn to. The Nun lay ready to sail at the pier, and I might be able to work my way to Arkhangelsk on it, or wherever it was bound for. So there was no lack of prospects in several quarters.

My last crisis had dealt roughly with me. I began to lose a lot of hair, my headaches were also very troublesome, especially in the morning, and my nervousness refused to go away. During the day I sat and wrote with my hands swathed in rags, merely because I couldn’t stand my own breath on them. When Jens Olai slammed the stable door downstairs or a dog entered the back yard and started barking, I felt as though pierced to the quick by cold stabs of pain which hit me everywhere. I was fairly done for.

I toiled at my work day after day, barely allowing myself time to gulp down my food before going on with my writing again. In those days both my bed and my small wobbly writing table were flooded with notes and manuscript pages I took turns working on, adding new things that would occur to me in the course of the day, erasing, brushing up the dead spots with a colorful word here and there, struggling ahead sentence by sentence with the greatest difficulty. Then, one afternoon, one of my articles was finished at last and, pleased and happy, I stuck it in my pocket and went up to the “Commander’s.” It was high time I bestirred myself to get some money again, I didn’t have very many øre left.

The “Commander” asked me to sit down for a moment, then he would right away . . . And he went on writing.

I looked about me in the small office: busts, lithographs, clippings, and an immense wastebasket that looked as though it could swallow a man whole. I felt sad at the sight of that huge maw, those dragon’s jaws which were always open, always ready to receive fresh scrapped writings—fresh blasted hopes.

“What is today’s date?” the “Commander” suddenly asks from his desk.

“The 28th,” I answer, glad to be of service to him.

“The 28th.” And he goes on writing. Finally he slips

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