Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Excerpt from Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, Vol. 3: October, 1921-July, 1922
One autumn evening there appeared at Janson's Church, ' at one of the weekly discussion meetings, a stranger whom I had not seen before and whom one could not fail to notice. His refined and well-chiseled features, his tall, strong figure, his lively manners and animated conversation, his whole unique personality, sharply contrasted with his surroundings. He bore a striking resemblance to bjornson, and it seemed as though he strove to make the most of this fact and copy Bjornson, which was irritating, as imitation always is. He was evidently acquainted here from former occasions, for he greeted and nodded recognition all around the gathering. This man was Knut Hamsun; he was then twenty - eight years old. He had just come in from the country, from a farm up in Dakota, where he had been working as a laborer. Immediately before that time, he had been employed as a street-car conductor in Chicago. Now he had saved enough, he thought, that he could pull through the winter without utterly starving.
He intended to make use of this spell Of leisure to deliver a number of lectures on literary topics in the city, nothing less would do And if admission was fixed as low as ten cents, and if he could get the least bigoted Scandinavian papers to give him a wee little bit of advertising, and if Janson, moreover, announced the matter to his congregation, one should be able to count on large enough a number of people that after paying for the hall enough would be left to provide him with tobacco through the winter and very likely it would suffice to buy a pair of overshoes, which he indeed was greatly in need of. He believed - he asserted with a mild oath - that he knew more about literature than any other man in Minnesota. It was, so to speak, his field, and he was honestly convinced that he possessed indisputable talent in that direction.
For general farm labor and work on the street-cars he had no ability at all. He had earned anything but praise this summer in Dakota. He had strength enough, he was as powerful as a lion, and he was not altogether an idiot, either, but if a certain kind of work could not completely engage his attention, his thoughts ran off with him. When he had filled his wheel-barrow.
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