Mysteries (novel)
Mysteries ( norweg.: Mysterier ) is a novel by Knut Hamsun in 1892 The first German translation appeared in 1894 founded specifically for this purpose publisher Albert Langen..
Content
The novel depicts in a change from auktorialem telling and the personal narrative technique of stream of consciousness, the arrival of a stranger in a strange small Norwegian port city. This nerd with mysterious past, Johan Nilsen Nagel, wears bright yellow suits and sends itself messages in order to legitimize his alleged agronomist completely unmotivated stay and to make it appear important. He buys people their supposedly valuable pieces of furniture from at inflated sums. Nagel speaks of dedication on literature and philosophy topics and is a charming entertainer. It consists of all the rules of small-town life away that which culminates in a charismatic violin playing on a festival that is virtuosic but wrong at the same time and still attracts all the attention. He is in his inner contradictions, a "foreigner of existence ," as he calls himself.
He falls in love only to the beautiful minister's daughter Dagny Kielland that rejects him strangely. After this experience, he is approaching quickly decided no longer young wife Martha Gude, however, spurned him also after initial sympathies. At the same time he makes with minutes, an old man and mocked, familiar and initiates him that he intends to solve a murder that had happened shortly before his arrival. A mysterious woman appearance eventually drives him to suicide in the sea after a first suicide attempt could still be thwarted by minute. Life in the sleepy coastal town can hold his usual running again.
Interpretation
Even the title of the novel suggests that the true motives of action are hidden. Versatile is therefore also its interpretation. There is general agreement that Hamsun has given the figure of the nail to a high degree trains his own personality, which was also confirmed by Hamsun's son gates. The Mysteries According to this view ultimately of one's own psyche, with the author dealing. The feeling of strangeness in its environment, which was hard to escape, he had himself witnessed, among others, in Oslo and in America.
In addition, Hamsun lodged in the novel his views on the work of his predecessor Ibsen, Hugo, Tolstoy, and Maupassant, accusing unrealistic representations of the psyche, while he used Dostoevsky and his novel Crime and Punishment as a model. In a speech to nail also proves as a follower of Nietzsche's idea of the master race.
Expenditure
- Knut Hamsun: Mysteries, Translated by Siegfried Weibel ISBN 3-423-11157-7