Knut Hamsun: The Call Of Life

It is so wonderful to sometimes discover the name of an artist whose art elevated your mood to an ethereal plane.

I am talking about Knut Hamsun. Now I know he is a Nobel Laureate and the originial 'psychological novel' guy inspiring the likes of Faulkner and Hemingway.

Back in my film school, I saw a black and white film called Sult. The hero is hungry---famished would be a better word. And he is beginning to develop a mental illness due to the constant hunger. What finally happens is something you might be inspired to read about.

However his conversation with his shoes was absolutely surreal....i mean 'psychologically realistic" lest the genre-obsessed haul me over the coals. Only last night we learnt to distinguish the fine line between magic realism and psychological realism as so tersely pointed by J M Coetzee about Gabriel Garcia Marquez.


So recalling the film, I thought I must sample something from Hamsun's treasure trove. I found a preview of the book- Hunger on which Sult was based. But that tiny morsel could scarce quell my hunger. So I picked up 'Great Stories By Nobel Prize Winners' in which there is a story by the Norwegian Nobel Laureate called The Call of Life.

It is so simple that it defies all expectations. Yet it's honesty leaves a mark. It is the story of a man wandering the streets at dusk when he sees a woman strolling about. First he thinks she must be like so many others- "creature of the night".

However it turns out that she has far more dignity than to simply accept the narrator's arm at a go. But she eventually relents and they end up in her house where she gets intimate with him. It is only later he notices that this young but ravaged woman of 23 or so has a corpse of an old man in a coffin in the drawing room.

Then suddenly the mist lifts and all becomes clear. Here's a widow, fresh and free, heaving a sigh of relief at the turn of the event.

I like such matter-of-fact stories. A story does not always have to end in high drama. It can sometimes be a slice of life and therefore its climax and resolution can only be about "moving on".

Wish I could lay my hands on Hunger and read it voraciously (pun intended).