Hamsun died in 1952 without regret or remorse

Nine o'clock in the morning. The Sun has not yet lifted, but the light already flooding the House of the small hostel Everda Hus (1). In early February, the days are long in the Norwegian Norland. By the window, to cut an absolute landscape: water, rock, mountain, sky confused in a Symphony of light pink and blue glacier. The extreme northern land awakens, Opal luster, Moon piece fell in cold seas - the Moon that makes men poets, dreamers and madmen. In the summer we have seen that images: valleys submerged purple flowers, a painful dark green, fjords colors Mediterranean forests...

Long nights polar and midnight Suns have forged the soul of Knut Hamsun (1859-1952), who lived here between Hamaroy and Tranoy (2) three to twenty years. Work of farm with a severe uncle, prayers Sunday, little time for daydream... and yet. For a budding poet, the contemplation of the sublime, harsh world is like a challenge: sink his incredible visions in gold the words. Same goes for the feelings, the waves of the soul. Behind the joys and, the anger and the silences of relatives - including a depressed mother who speaks only in surveying the roads - Knut Hamsun feels that there is one thousand emotions and characters to guess and to describe what fill thousands of pages, a lifetime during.

Knut Hamsun wrote already when, at fifteen, he returned to Hamaroy, after being confirmed by a pastor of his choice in the mountains. He joined the family farm of Hamsund or that of the hated uncle, but the remains of a rich trader from Tranoy, who uses it in his shop, today turned into a "gallery". This is where he falls in love for the first time of Evarda, the daughter of the boss (which the hostel, installed at his side, took the name). A good starting point for any drawn career of writer "romantic". But said you: Hamsun was too much oxygen in the blood, too many lights in the eyes, hot and cold in the soul... When on-site, feet in the snow and the head in the pristine sky, understand that the writer had placed the bar above, pushed his artistic requirement on madness, grown arrogance, that child mistake and horror.

"A master and a traitor".

This stay North of the world is a return to the sources: here where was born the inspiration of a great writer, that at the dawn of the 20th century revolutionized the world literature, prior to mislead, forty years later, in a support to the Third Reich. The Norway currently celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth, otherwise mezzo voce, at least in chiaroscuro... She celebrates a great writer - sacred: Nobel Prize in 1920-, but not a great man. A special destiny in any case, described with attention to detail and without complacency by Ingar Sletten Kolloen in his impressive biography "Knut Hamsun, dreamer and conqueror". The monumental work, a bestseller throughout the critically acclaimed just be translated into French in Gaia, reduced to two volumes in one (750 pages anyway...).

Met between two planes at the airport of Oslo, the biographer does is not by four paths: "He was a master and a traitor." It is the master that wants to honour the Hamaroy region, with its splendid Hamsun Center, House body of wood and glass, bamboo mane man Tower, overlooking the River Glimma, designed by architect Steven Holl. It is no coincidence that it was built in the Norland, near the capital where Nazism of Knut Hamsun has not finished to embarrass (no street steps of monument in his name). Because its commitment was not warm - repeated calls to the collaboration of the Norwegians, meeting at the Summit with Hitler, vibrant funeral oration at the announcement of the death of the führer... - and may be placed on the account of the senility: the writer wrote his last book during his trial in ninety years. At best, can we invoke an acute form of schizophrenia - contrary to its articles, his novels have never been an apology of Nazism.

The masterpiece of Knut Hamsun, "Hunger", now considered a classic of world literature, published in 1890. From the fjords of the Norland, the novel tells the wandering of the writer in the big city, Kristiana (former name of Oslo), virtually without the sou and empty stomach. A critical situation which makes it a hallucinatory State: Hamsun met his nerves Strip in style unbridled, feverish, invents the autofiction and the modern psychological novel. Too innovative, he will know not an immediate success. With "Mysteries" (1891) and "Pan" (1894), the writer takes some distances with himself. The rest of his work is a scholarly tree crossing a myriad of complex, often recurring characters - Hamsun is behind each of them. Psychology is more assertive, sophisticated stories.

Lovers of love

One of the simplest and the most beautiful is told in "Victoria": the impossible love between a young poet son of sucker and a rich girl. Lovers cold, Hamsun is throughout his life, more in love with love (and himself) to women who fall at his feet. Married twice, the writer actually see all colours to his wives - "creating" more often outside the home (in a hotel, a cabin), bringing together on tables of fortune small scattered papers where he noted his ideas. Obsessive, egotist, constantly on the nerves - but not so crazy that it... "It is better not having to husband, brother or child", said Ingar Sletten Kolloen.

Slayer of the order established in its early stages (déboulonnant "old glory" as Ibsen), rather close to the progressive, then it will inexorably drift to the extreme right. An atavistic hatred of England and unfortunate experiences of emigrant in America took him to dismiss the anglo-saxon world and democratic ideals. He feels however increasingly closer to the Germany (which he dedicated a cult), and, on a political plan, calls his greeting the arrival of a new Caesar. His novels as "The awakening of the soil" published in 1917 and his plans for model farm (to Hamaroy, then in his field of Norholm, South of the country) reflect his more radical of the modern world rejection. The writer dreams of a return to Earth, to an aristocratic and paternalistic society. The reactionary activist is in Hitler his Caesar, imagine a new Norway, special daughter of a conquering empire. Knut Hamsun it is not simply "wet" with Nazism, he plunged inside with women and children. It is playing on his alleged irresponsibility - to the chagrin of the individual - that the courts will avoid him the Supreme punishment after the war. Hamsun died in 1952, without regret or remorse. His talent as writer does the clear nothing; Conversely, his unworthy behavior does not call into question the magnitude of his work. The Norway must live with this contradiction: Knut Hamsun was both a genius and a monster. A genius twisted, man of light and shade, which relativizes the idea of the beauty of the world. Even Tranoy, clear and pure, night where the sky actioner of northern lights, can give rise to Angel and demon.