Last night the “fog” finally left me as effortlessly as it had arrived seven months ago. My mourning period was now officially over, although the goodLast night the “fog” finally left me as effortlessly as it had arrived seven months ago. My mourning period was now officially over, although the good memories would be firmly entrenched forever in my mind, as well as the sad ones. I shed my widow’s weeds. Also the tears surprisingly enough poured for the first time in ages. I certainly do not have a weak character. I had been in the doldrums and was not progressing, nor “turning the page”. Knut showed me via “Hunger” (Norwegian: “Sult”) that one has to continue with life regardless; forget hunger, forget the dark shadows, the periods of feeling sorry for oneself, just survive, continue on regardless whatever happens, for life has given you another chance and another adventure to pursue. So grab it and forge with speed into the sunlight. I’m sure as I look down the valley to the backdrop of my beloved Pyrenean mountain range and the Pic d’Ani that they would agree wholeheartedly with me, as would my husband John.
I do believe in serendipity, as well as destiny and I do believe that I was meant to read this book. I had read Steve’s and Rakhi’s reviews a while back but to me they were purely excellent reviews as so many are on Goodreads. But then suddenly another review appeared and it affected me for some singular reason. Perhaps I had to read it?
Upon reading the first paragraph, I was hooked and ready for this wonderful literary journey:
It was during the time I wondered about and starved in Christiania; Christiania, singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.
And did that indeed prove to be the case.
This book is such a mixed bag of philosophical and multi-faceted reveries, vagaries and ideas. Our unnamed narrator (why would an author want to leave a narrator without a name? I’ve never understood that) runs the gamut of every conceivable emotion:
The average individual with a good job will never know about hunger. Imagine going without food for two or three days because there’s no money to purchase even a loaf of bread and finally drinking water, which causes the individual to retch.
Imagine, even when on your uppers as in the case of our author, you are so convinced of your literary aspirations that you persevere regardless, even though you have nowhere to live, as there’s no money to pay the rent; finally losing the one pencil you own and so thus being unable to write an article for “Commodore”, the narrator’s lifeline for survival.
Imagine feeling desire and lust for a woman when your clothes are in rags but nevertheless wanting to pursue it through to the utter end.
Imagine feeling so frustrated with yourself that you succumb to anger and hold inner conflicting arguments and discussions and even wonder if you are becoming insane.
Imagine crawling back to a lodging house, even though the thought humiliates you, when the pregnant landlady has already thrown you out for not paying your rent.
Imagine lying so that people will still think that you are working and finally, imagine being so convinced of your own writing ability that you continue and continue but when finally… Well that is for you the reader to find out.
There are so many excellent sections in here in which to quote but if I did that I would indeed be quoting the entire book. However, I have to add the following:
There is an amazing section when “Commodore”, who has accepted articles/essays from the narrator in the past, who upon seeing the latter staggering due to lack of food, gives him half-a sovereign. He’s certainly clever and that’s for sure as he knows that a good article will eventually be forthcoming from our narrator.
The humility of our narrator upon this act:
I was left standing on the pavement, gazing after him. I wept quietly and silently. “I never saw the like!” I said to myself. “He gave me half-a-sovereign.” I walked back and placed myself where he had stood, imitated all his movements, held the half-sovereign up to my moistened eyes, inspected it on both side, and began to swear – to swear at the top of my voice, that there was no manner of doubt that what I held in my hand was a half-sovereign.
When I came across “Ylajali”, I assumed in ignorance this was the name of the woman who the narrator was facing and for whom he felt such desire:
I stand and gaze into her eyes, and hit, on the spur of the moment, on a name which I have never heard before — a name with a gliding, nervous sound — Ylajali!
I was fascinated by this name. It appeared to be so exotic but with a Yiddish ring to it. I researched into it and found:
The name is not only a symbolic substitute for the desired woman. It is also a symbol of desire itself – considered in the Lacanian sense of a drive sustained by lack, sliding from element to element in the chain of symbolic substitutes, and which can never be fulfilled without losing its character of being desire: Y-la-ja-li
Although “Hunger” proved to be a sensation upon publication, many individuals objected to him. Firstly Knut Hamsun was an unknown quantity and was:
a true scion of the best old peasant stock. Through the impressions of his childhood and early youth he became affiliated with the volatile race of Nordland, a people as alien from the heavier inland peasant as if they lived on different continents. The fishermen who play with death for the wealth of the sea and depend for their livelihood on the caprices of nature do not easily harden into traditional moulds. Childish and improvident, witty and sentimental, often fond of the melodramatic, simple and yet shrewd, superstitious but brave beyond all praise, the native of Nordland is a type unlike every other Norwegian. Wherever he may roam, he will yearn for the wonderland of his youth…as from the nature of Nordland with its alternations of melting loveliness and stark gloom that he drew his poetic inspiration.
During his second stay in America, between 1886 and 1888, he worked as a navvy and for nine months as a tramconductor in Chicago. He was known for his habit of reading Aristotle and Euripides between stops. He was very poor and weathered the deep winter of Chicago by wearing newspaper under his clothes; his colleagues liked to touch him to make him crackle..
Our author was a true wanderer throughout his life and perhaps probably due to this, he learned humility and all those other good aspects that make up our lives as human beings.
I really admire this author and am so delighted that I’ve read this remarkable book. For me there’s something special about Norwegian authors that manages to touch my psyche. Is it the weather that brings such incredible richness to these Norwegian works? I really don’t know. Purely one of the wonders of our life on this remarkable planet, Earth, I guess.
And finally, my special thanks to Will for helping me out of the “fog”.
I have many biographies but this one has to be my favourite and the book itself is so well structured, with extraordinary illustrations that are not to be forgotten.
Irish history for some obscure reason has always fascinated me. I don’t believe that I have any Irish genes but most of my friends are Irish, from both the republic and the north.
I had this feeling of anticipation when I received this book and looking at the photo of Roger Casement on the cover, my immediate reaction was that he appeared slightly villainous. This would prove not to be the case. I then immediately looked at all of the illustrations and some of these were harrowing as they showed mutilated natives in the Congo. I especially liked looking at friends and associates of Casement, as this better enabled me to remember their faces when I came across them in the text. They set the scene so to speak.
All I had previously known about Roger Casement, an Irish born diplomat, was that he was hanged on 3 August, 1916 for high treason; the reason being for his role in Ireland’s Easter uprising on 24 April of that year and that he had been knighted in 1911.
He was Ulster-born and thus a protestant and it was only found out later that his mother had him baptized as a catholic which turned out very well for him in the end.
Imagine a man who on three occasions achieved an international reputation. The first two were for reporting atrocities in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold III and also, seven years later, as Consul-General in Putumayo in the Upper Amazon, whereupon Casement wrote a damning report about the native workers who were very badly treated by employees of the Peruvian Amazon Company, a British based firm. This caused a sensation in England. The photos shown in the book are not for the faint-hearted. Casement received his knighthood because of this report and yet surprisingly enough he had reservations about this. His loyalty to Ireland was beginning to emerge.
Casement had this wonderful side to his character – that of goodness. The thought of any suffering of a human being was torment for him. He also had his Catholic faith (latterly discovered) and in 1914 revealed his feelings in a sonnet:
“Weep not that you no longer feel the tide High-breasting sun and storm that bore along Your youth on currents of perpetual song; For in these mid-sea waters, still and wide, A sleepless purpose the great Deep doth hide. Here spring the mighty fountains, pure and strong That bear sweet change of breath to city throng Who, had the sea no breeze, would soon have died So, though the sun shines not in such a blue Nor have the stars the meaning youth devised The heavens are nigher, and a light shines through The brightness that nor Sun nor Stars sufficed And on this lonely waste we find it true Lost youth and love, not last, are hid with Christ.”
So when and why did it all go horribly wrong for him? By 1913 his entire life was taken up with the independence of Ireland. He now had Sinn Fein ideals, that is, supporting the unification of Ireland and never wavered in his belief until his death.
Regrettably for Casement after the First World War had started, he had gone to Germany, a country that he really admired (yes but he should not have gone during the war!) and managed to convince the Germans to provide arms for an uprising in Ireland. Latterly, his friends said that he had been mentally affected by living in the tropics for so long as from this period he suffered dreadfully from depression and had the beginnings of manic depression.
Well the upshot was that after returning from Germany, he landed in a U-Boat in Ireland in 1916, where he was soon picked up by the police. What is difficult to understand is that he actually returned to Ireland to stop the planned uprising. At his trial, this was never mentioned as Casement felt that his judges might guess that he had said this to escape treason. Nevertheless, the trial was basically a kangaroo court that had decided in advance he was guilty. His final statement after the judgement of guilty by the court at his trial was absolutely splendid and his friends all supported him in the hope of an appeal. There was even correspondence from the Vatican giving the reason Casement was returning to Ireland was to stop the uprising. This never came to the attention of the court. It was seen by the British Cabinet, when considering the appeal, but they ignored it. I get the impression that the independence of Ireland was far from their thoughts at this time.
And finally the “black diaries”, found in his lodgings in Ebury Street, Belgravia showing that he was a practising homosexual and this fact was unknown to all of his friends. What on earth had that to do with the court? Well regrettably he had a barrister, Alexander Martin Sullivan of the Irish Bar, who was quite shocked by this revelation and so it was not brought up at the trial although everyone was soon aware of their existence. Sullivan was indeed a bad choice to represent Casement as “he was on the council which had been set up in Ireland to encourage recruiting for the British forces and he was a law officer of the crown.” With hindsight, Casement would have been better off representing himself at his trial. The diaries I believe were the final nail in the coffin for a possible reprieve.
There was so much controversy of these diaries for many years and Casement’s friends believed that they were forgeries. What would be the outcome here?
Casement finally realized that death was on the horizon. He hadn’t initially believed it but nevertheless he went to his death a brave man. Even the executioner Ellis was proud of him. “He appeared to be the bravest man it fell to my unhappy lot to execute”.
He had a horror of being buried in Pentonville prison after his execution and it took many years before his remains were finally returned to Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, the city where he was born. Surprisingly enough it was Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, who in 1964, Casement’s centenary year, decided this could happen.
This is a beautifully written book but I'm going to make a contradictory statement here - it is not for me.
Jason Taylor is a delightful boy, for most This is a beautifully written book but I'm going to make a contradictory statement here - it is not for me.
Jason Taylor is a delightful boy, for most of the time that is, but my attention began to wander after a couple of chapters. The book did not fulfil my expectations. A quick skim through the book and then that was the end of that.
A shame really as it held such promise initially. Perhaps I will try and reread it at some later stage in my life....more
If you want to know all about plants and seeds then this is the book for you. Seeds are indeed the capsules of life and many are currently residing inIf you want to know all about plants and seeds then this is the book for you. Seeds are indeed the capsules of life and many are currently residing in The Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place in Sussex, England, which was set up in 2000, and also in similar seed banks throughout the world. An excellent idea as one never knows when a species can become extinct and what a brilliant idea for the future.
The photos are excellent, as is the book but I have a general issue with the shiny/glossy pages as they upset my psyche and the font has to be a six or a seven. I really don't like resorting to a magnifying glass. Apart from being time-consuming, it's tiring on my eyes.
Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, added the preface which was excellent as we all know what an avid supporter he is of anything to do with nature but please do enlarge the font!...more
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