Look Back on Happiness, by Knut Hamsun.pdf

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Title: Look Back on Happiness

Author: Knut Hamsun

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8445]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on July 11, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOOK BACK ON HAPPINESS ***

Produced by Eric Eldred, Robert Connal

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

LOOK BACK ON HAPPINESS

KNUT HAMSUN

Translated from the Norwegian

By PAULA WIKING

I have gone to the forest.

Not because I am offended about anything, or very unhappy about men's evil ways; but since

the forest will not come to me, I must go to it. That is all. I have not gone this time as a slave

and a vagabond. I have money enough and am overfed, stupefied with success and good

fortune, if you understand that. I have left the world as a sultan leaves rich food and harems

and flowers, and clothes himself in a hair shirt.

Really, I could make quite a song and dance about it. For I mean to roam and think and make

great irons red-hot. Nietzsche no doubt would have spoken thus: The last word I spake unto

men achieved their praise, and they nodded. But it was my last word; and I went into the

forest. For then did I comprehend the truth, that my speech must needs be dishonest or

foolish.... But I said nothing of the kind; I simply went to the forest.

You must not believe that nothing ever happens here. The snowflakes drift down just as they

do in the city, and the birds and beasts scurry about from morning till night, and from night

till morning. I could send solemn stories from this place, but I do not. I have sought the forest

for solitude and for the sake of my great irons; for I have great irons which lie within me and

grow red-hot. So I deal with myself accordingly. Suppose I were to meet a buck reindeer one

day, then I might say to myself:

"Great heavens, this is a buck reindeer, he's dangerous!"

But if then I should be too frightened, I might tell myself a comforting lie and say it was a calf

or some feathered beast.

You say nothing happens here?

One day I saw two Lapps meet. A boy and a girl. At first they behaved as people do. " Boris! "

they said to each other and smiled. But immediately after, both fell at full length in the snow

and were gone from my sight. After a quarter of an hour had passed, I thought, "You'd better

see to them; they may be smothered in the snow." But then they got up and went their

separate ways.

In all my weatherbeaten days, I have never seen such a greeting as that.

Day and night I live in a deserted hut of peat into which I must crawl on my hands and knees.

Someone must have built it long ago and used it, for lack of a better,--perhaps a man who was

in hiding, a man who concealed himself here for a few autumn days. There are two of us in

the hut, that is if you regard Madame as a person; otherwise there is only one. Madame is a

mouse I live with, to whom I have given this honorary title. She eats everything I put aside for

her in the nooks and corners, and sometimes she sits watching me.

When I first came, there was stale straw in the hut, which Madame by all means was allowed

to keep; for my own bed I cut fresh pine twigs, as is fitting. I have an ax and a saw and the

necessary crockery. And I have a sleeping bag of sheepskin with the wool inside. I keep a fire

burning in the fireplace all night, and my shirt, which hangs by it, smells of fresh resin in the

morning. When I want coffee, I go out, fill the kettle with clean snow, and hang it over the

fire till the snow turns to water.

Is this a life worth living?

There you have betrayed yourself. This is a life you do not understand. Yes, your home is in

the city, and you have furnished it with vanities, with pictures and books; but you have a wife

and a servant and a hundred expenses. Asleep or awake you must keep pace with the world

and are never at peace. I have peace. You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and

books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes

me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. If you ask me intellectual questions and try to

trip me up, then I will reply, for example, that God is the origin of all things and that truly

men are mere specks and atoms in the universe. You are no wiser than I. But if you should go

so far as to ask me what is eternity, then I know quite as much in this matter, too, and reply

thus: Eternity is merely unborn time, nothing but unborn time.

My friend, come here to me and I will take a mirror from my pocket and reflect the sun on

your face, my friend.

You lie in bed till ten or eleven in the morning, yet you are weary, exhausted, when you get

up. I see you in my mind's eye as you go out into the street; the morning has dawned too early

on your blinking eyes. I rise at five quite refreshed. It is still dark outdoors, yet there is

enough to look at--the moon, the stars, the clouds, and the weather portents for the day. I

prophesy the weather for many hours ahead. In what key do the winds whistle? Is the crack of

the ice in the Glimma light and dry, or deep and long? These are splendid portents, and as it

grows lighter, I add the visible signs to the audible ones, and learn still more.

Then a narrow streak of daylight appears far down in the east, the stars fade from the sky, and

soon light reigns over all. A crow flies over the woods, and I warn Madame not to go outside

the hut or she will be devoured.

But if fresh snow has fallen, the trees and copses and the great rocks take on giant, unearthly

shapes, as though they had come from another world in the night. A storm-felled pine with its

root torn up looks like a witch petrified in the act of performing strange rites.

Here a hare has sprung by, and yonder are the tracks of a solitary reindeer. I shake out my

sleeping bag and after hanging it high in a tree to escape Madame, who eats everything, I

follow the tracks of the reindeer into the forest. It has jogged along without haste, but toward

a definite goal--straight east to meet the day. By the banks of the Skiel, which is so rapid that

its waters never freeze, the reindeer has stopped to drink, to scrape the hillside for moss, to

rest a while, and then moved on.

And perhaps what this reindeer has done is all the knowledge and experience I gain that day.

It seems much to me. The days are short; at two, I am already strolling homeward in the deep

twilight, with the good, still night approaching. Then I begin to cook. I have a great deal of

meat stored in three pure-white drifts of snow. In fact I have something even better: eight fat

cheeses of reindeer milk, to eat with butter and crisp-bread.

While the pot is boiling I lie down, and gaze at the fire till I fall asleep. I take my midday nap

before my meal. And when I waken, the food is cooked, filling the hut with an aroma of meat

and resin. Madame darts back and forth across the floor and at length gets her share. I eat, and

light my cutty-pipe.

The day is at an end. All has been well, and I have had no unpleasantness. In the great silence

surrounding me, I am the only adult, roaming man; this makes me bigger and more important,

God's kin. And I believe the red-hot irons within me are progressing well, for God does great

things for his kin.

I lie thinking of the reindeer, the path it took, what it did by the river, and how it continued on

its journey. There under the trees it has nibbled, and its horns have rubbed against the bark,

leaving their marks; there an osier bed has forced it to turn aside; but just beyond, it has

straightened its path and continued east once more. All this I think of.

And you? Have you read in a newspaper, which disagrees with another newspaper, what the

public in Norway is thinking of old-age insurance?

On stormy days I sit indoors and find something to occupy my time. Perhaps I write letters to

some acquaintance or other telling him I am well, and hope to hear the same from him. But I

cannot post the letters, and they grow older every day. Not that it matters. I have tied the

letters to a string that hangs from the ceiling to prevent Madame from gnawing at them.

One day a man came to the hut. He walked swiftly and stealthily; his clothes were ordinary

and he wore no collar, for he was a laboring man. He carried a sack, and I wondered what

could be in it.

"Good morning," we said to each other. "Fine weather in the woods."

"I didn't expect to find anybody in the hut," said the man. His manner was at once forceful

and discontented; he flung down the sack without humility.

"He may know something about me," I thought, "since he is such a man."

"Have you lived here long?" he asked. "And are you leaving soon?"

"Is the hut yours, perhaps?" I asked in my turn.

Then he looked at me.

"Because if the hut is yours, that's another matter," I said. "But I don't intend like a pickpocket

to take it with me when I leave."

I spoke gently and jestingly to avoid committing a blunder by my speech.

But I had said quite the right thing; the man at once lost his assurance. Somehow I had made

him feel that I knew more about him than he knew about me.

When I asked him to come in, he was grateful and said:

"Thank you, but I'm afraid I'll get snow all over your floor."

Then he took special pains to wipe his boots clean, and bringing his sack with him, crawled

in.

"I could give you some coffee," I said.

"You shouldn't trouble on my account," he replied, wiping his face and panting with the heat,

"though I've been walking all night."

"Are you crossing the fjeld?"

"That depends. I don't suppose there's work to be got on a winter day on the other side,

either."

I gave him coffee.

"Got anything to eat?" he said. "It's a shame to ask you. A round of crisp-bread? I had no

chance to bring food with me."

"Yes, I've got bread, butter, and reindeer cheese. Help yourself."

"It's not so easy for a lot of people in the winter," said the man as he ate.

"Could you take some letters to the village for me?" I asked. "I'll pay you for it."

"Oh, no, I couldn't do that," the man replied. "I'm afraid that's impossible. I must cross the

fjeld now. I've heard there's work in Hilling, in the Hilling Forest. So I can't."

"Must get his back up a bit again," I thought. "He just sits now there without any guts at all. In

the end he'll start begging for a few coppers."

I felt his sack and said:

"What's this you're lugging about with you? Heavy things?"

"Mind your own business!" was his instant retort, as he drew the sack closer to him.

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