Hamsun: Eine Filmerzählung

by Per Olov Enquist

P. O. Enquist beschreibt die entscheidenden Szenen zwischen 1936 und 1953 im Hause des norwegischen Nobelpreisträgers Knut Hamsun, der sich in den Dienst der deutschen Besatzer stellte. Im Mittelpunkt dieser ergreifenden Erzählung, die auf einem Drehbuch basiert, steht nicht die Schuldfrage, sondern der "Todestanz einer Ehe". Der "Fall" Hamsun - ein bewegendes menschliches Drama, das Enquists wichtigste Themen aufgreift.

223 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Per Olov Enquist, better known as P. O. Enquist was one of Sweden's internationally best known authors. He has worked as a journalist, playwright, and novelist. In the nineties, he gained international recognition with his novel The Visit of The Royal Physician.

After a degree in History of literature at Uppsala University he worked as a newspaper columnist and TV debate moderator from 1965 to 1976. Because of his work he soon became an influential figure on the Swedish literary scene. From 1970 to 1971 Enquist lived in Berlin on a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service and in 1973 he was a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been working as an independent writer since 1977.

Enquist's works are characterized by a chronic pessimistic view of the world. They always describe the restrictions imposed by the pietistical way of living, especially in March of the Musicians (1978) and Lewi's Journey (2001). He gained international recognition with his novel The Visit of The Royal Physician (1999) where he tells the story of Struensee, the personal physician of the Danish King Christian VII. Many of Enquist's works have been translated into English by Tiina Nunnally.

Reviews

[Emilio Berra · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'autunno di uno scrittore
Libro molto interessante dell'autore svedese Enquist incentrato sulla vecchiaia del grande scrittore norvegese Hamsun (Premio Nobel 1920) , amatissimo in patria finché, durante l'invasione nazista, ormai ad età avanzata, parteggiò per Hitler.
Nel dopoguerra venne processato.

Vediamo l'anziano letterato, "sazio d'anni e di gloria", risultare affascinato dal sogno hitleriano. Eppure non aveva mai letto "Mein Kampf" e non condivideva l'antisemitismo ; un'adesione essenzialmente in chiave antibritannica : pensava alla Germania come unica nazione in grado di contrastare l'Inghilterra. Un grosso abbaglio di un uomo coltissimo, il cui mondo però si era confinato entro il perimetro della propria mente.

Le ricadute dell'infelice scelta si estesero anche nell'ambito della vita privata fino al tracollo familiare : il fragile equilibrio coniugale sfociò in comportamenti i cui effetti furono devastanti ; i figli stessi subirono contraccolpi imprevisti.
Dopo il conflitto mondiale, ci fu il processo (egli stesso voleva essere processato).
L'ultima parte del testo è particolarmente bella.
Il finale può essere considerato ovvio, ma è ammantato di toccante poesia.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knut Hamsun captivates me like no other author. Knowledge of his early personal history enhances readings of his novels. His personal actions during the era of the Third Reich repel me. However, especially with his last, an autobiographical work, On Overgrown Paths, he intrigues me to no end.

His 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature was a source of Norwegian pride akin to America’s after the 1969 moon landing. What kind of man could he have been to give his medal to Joseph Goebbels? His novel Hunger arguably gave birth to 20th century literature. Isaac Bashevis Singer translated some of his novels into Yiddish. His writing inspired Ernest Hemingway. He supported Vidkun Quisling, whose name is synonymous with traitorous conspiracy. He was a vain, self-confident, hopelessly indulgent writer who ridiculed Ibsen. His only visit with Hitler, which was meant to secure Norway’s “rightful” place in post war fascist Europe, ended as a tragicomical farce of mutual misunderstanding and humiliation for him. Yet, he still wrote a glowing obituary of Hitler that was published the same day as Germany’s capitulation (timing!). The title of Robert Ferguson’s biography—arguably the best literary biography I’ve ever read—aptly summed up his life; he was an Enigma . Ingar Sletten Kolloen’s biography makes use of personal letters that both explain and further complicate the picture of Hamsun’s personal life. I’m still not sure of whether I hate, admire, or feel sorry for him.

There are no great monuments dedicated to Hamsun, nor is it likely there will ever be one. His complex legacy has led to repeated reassessments of his place in world literature, probably none more debated than Jan Troell’s 1996 film Hamsun starring Max von Sydow in the title role. It portrayed Hamsun as having been manipulated by his wife Marie into taking such a public role in support of Quisling and Nazi Germany; that her motivations were driven by a quest to fulfill a frustrated need to create her own identity. But the film in no way absolved Hamsun for his own responsibility for his public pronouncements. The positive reception of the film motivated Monika Zager to write a rebuttal of sorts, one of the worst, most ridiculous books I’ve ever had the misfortune to endure. She argued, unconvincingly through a selective and skewed examination of Hamsun’s mostly obscure writings, that his fascism was a core value and trait that pervaded all of his writing.

Per Olov Enquist, after watching Troell’s film, was motivated to write his own “screenplay” that was based in large part on Danish author Thorkild Hansen’s book about Hamsun’s trial for treason (which I have unfortunately not had the opportunity to read) after WWII. It is a film I would love to see produced. Enquist’s Hamsun shares much with Troell’s film, but with a more nuanced, assertive voice for Hamsun—but it nonetheless leads us again the conclusion that he was an enigma. Enquist’s retelling opens in the late 1930s when his marriage to Marie was near its apex of bitterness. Hamsun was in his 70s, losing his hearing and waiting for death. He had stopped writing—indeed what more could he have written. He was the most widely read Norwegian author, beloved in Germany, Scandinavia and throughout the western world. Had he died then, he would have belonged to a literary pantheon with Cervantes, Goethe, Dickens, Twain, Zola and, which surely would have been unpleasant for him, Ibsen.

(The first cracks in his public image started to show in 1935 when he vehemently opposed to the nomination of imprisoned German journalist Carl von Ossietzky for the Nobel Peace Prize. Those who excused this as a momentary episode were obliterated when Hamsun publicly came out in strong support for Quisling’s puppet government during the Nazi occupation of Norway. In Enquist’s retelling of the story, Hamsun had an idealized view of fascism. It would preserve the racial and cultural purity of the Norway; it would place women at the core of society, albeit as mothers and wives whose role was to provide family stability—a stability that was essential for strong men to lead; it would restore a pastoral life to a rapidly growing urbanization; it would be a bulwark against the decadence and social superficiality being spearheaded around the world by English and American culture.)

His wife Marie, a former actress who courted his connections to fascists and collaborators, would tour Germany on cultural exchanges to conduct readings from Hamsun’s works, especially Growth of the Soil. She gave up her ambitions early in her life to serve Hamsun’s life and his art. Her tours were “in the service of national socialism, which she did for herself. She wanted to defend the life she lived so that it would have value. And if it was a lie about the life she had lived, it should now at least be anchored in an ideology.” Enquist’s scene has Hamsun’s longtime publisher Harald Grieg lamenting to a colleague after Hamsun implored is countrymen to lay down their arms:

— That national socialism should have such a magic flute at its disposal. With such a wonderfully beautiful sound. So beautiful that…
— Yes?
— …that we can’t afford to throw it away. His friend looks at him without a smile.
— Oh yes. We will have to.

Enquist’s scenes condense Hamsun’s life in lyrical rapidity. His four children, who should have been self-confident expressions of his steadfast, oversimplified philosophical world view, instead display many of the human failings one might expect of children whose father is literally perceived as a national icon.

After the war, he and Marie were arrested. The Norwegian government would have been content to put him in a home and declare him feeble, but instead it gave Hamsun a purpose to live. He wanted Norway to understand that he acted on his beliefs, however abhorrent they might have been judged to be. He literally willed the government to charge him and put him on trial. As Enquist writes in his “script:”

— You have taken everything from me. My honor, by books, my money, my home. My honor. My…works. My children. My marriage. And now you want to take my trial.
Silence.
— Monday around nine?
But Hamsun says only:
— I want my verdict.

Enquist in his concluding thoughts opines: “It is not easy to deal with a person who has wanted nothing more in his last twenty years than to die, who then decides differently because he first wants to be judged.”

After his guilty verdict, Hamsun wrote On Overgrown Paths, which did not necessarily rehabilitate him, but it gave Norwegians and the world a reason to take him seriously and not discard his previous work. It was—in a demonstration of who Hamsun was—both a reaffirming of his genius and, ironically, another strong argument of why he will forever remain an enigma who will allow future generations to either revere or judge him without either side being fully convinced that they are right.

Enquist’s verdict that “Traitors, as we have already learned from Dante, find themselves in the in lowest circle. A great poet in the lowest circle of Hell: that is almost irresistible. The fall from the highest height into the lowest circle: it almost make one dizzy.”

I was prepared to give this “screen play” four stars, but now, after thinking about it for a few days, I am compelled to give it five. I consider Growth of the Soil, Wayfarers, and Victoria to be among my favorite novels. If you are familiar with those novels and associate the name of Hamsun with Hunger, Pan, and Mysteries—and can read Enquist's "screenplay" in the original Swedish or Danish or German translation (I don’t believe this has been translated into English), and know a bit about Hamsun’s life from the mid-1930s through his death in 1952, you will appreciate this. It adds to the understanding of Hamsun’s life and legacy, but it answers no questions whatsoever.

If you know little about Hamsun, Enquist’s treatment will not interest you. If you have read a lot of Hamsun and know about his life, this is a compelling must read.

[Kuszma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knut Hamsun neve fogalom*: ő volt a norvégok írófejedelme, Nobel-díjjal kipreparált eleven halhatatlanság, a nemzet bölcsessége és büszkesége egy személyben. Aztán hopp, egyszer csak benácult, és a német megszállás idején olyan publicisztikákkal támogatta meg Hitler ideológiai haláltáncát, hogy pár Magyar Időkös újságíró azóta is az ő bronz mellszobrával támasztja ki a polcon a könyveket, el ne dőljenek. Mert eldőlnének – az a három finoman erotikus magazin meg az egy szem Wass Albert füveskönyv ugyanis hagyományosan nem áll meg a saját lábán. Aranybánya ez egy írónak – felemelkedés és aláhullás eposzba illő története, mese arról, hogy milyen ostoba tud lenni a bölcs, ha mindig csak a távolba néz, és nem veszi észre, ami az orra előtt zajlik. Enquist ráadásul nem pusztán ezt a morális prostitúciót vizsgálja, hanem beemeli a szövegbe Hamsun feleségét és gyermekeit is, így egy kifejezetten bergmani ízű családi pokoljárást is tollhegyre tűz, ahol a mélyen meghúzódó sértettségek és dugába dőlt elvárások mérge széteszi a szeretet kötelékeit.

Filmregény – következésképpen nagyon lehet ám haladni vele. Csupa párbeszéd, a leírás csak annyi, hogy vizuális keretbe tudja helyezni az olvasó a párbeszédek résztvevőit. Szikár szöveg, olyan hatást kelt, mintha nem is könyvet, hanem egy könyv csontvázát látnánk. Akad, akit ez zavarni fog, de én szerettem, hogy a rövid jelenetek és a szereplők dialógjai tág teret hagynak nekem a regény értelmezéséhez: szerettem, hogy nekem kell húst rajzolnom a csontokra. Élénk fantáziájú olvasóknak – különösen ha odavannak a morális feladványokért – nagyon ajánlom.

* Mondjuk, ha a google-ba beírjuk, hogy „knut”, akkor az első százötven találat egy híres jegesmedvét dob fel a híres norvég helyett – legyen ez intő jel a fasizmussal pettingelő írók számára.

[Jedermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per Olov Enquist Hamsun - eine Filmerzählung schrieb der Autor für Troells Filmbiografie Hamsun aus dem Jahr 1996.
Den Film Hamsun kann man nicht so einfach beziehen. Auf den großen Plattformen wird er nicht angeboten. Der Film wurde in Norwegisch gedreht, und die Szenen um die deutsche Besatzung und Hamsuns Besuch in Deutschland enthalten auch Deutsch. Die Hauptdarsteller sprechen Schwedisch und Dänisch. Natürlich sind englische Untertitel verfügbar. Aber durch den Wechsel der vier Sprachen kann man der Handlung schwerer folgen. Per Olov Enquist Filmerzählung hingegen gibt es auf Deutsch.
Für alle die, welche gerne Knut Hamsuns Romane gelesen haben und unvoreingenommen den Menschen Hamsun im Alter kennenlernen möchten, ist die Filmerzählung sehr zu empfehlen. Es werden die schwierigen Jahre von 1936 bis zum Tod von Hamsun im Jahr 1952 behandelt. Es sind die Jahre in denen der Dichter und Nationalpreisträger vom norwegischen Idol zum Landesverräter wird. In kurzen Plots wird die Handlung verdichtet beschrieben. Die Plots geben dem Leser die Möglichkeit ein Verständnis für diesen Werdegang zu entwickeln und nicht vorgefertigten Einschätzungen folgen zu müssen.

[F. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nato come sceneggiatura del film Hamsun di Jan Troell che fu presentato a Venezia nel 1996 questo libro fa rivivere la figura dello scrittore norvegese Knut Hamsun famoso oltre che per i suoi romanzi Pan e Fame (pubblicati in Italia da Adelphi) che gli valsero nel 1920 il premio Nobel per la letteratura, soprattutto per lo scandalo e il processo seguito al suo appoggio ufficiale, durante la seconda guerra mondiale, all'occupazione tedesca della Norvegia.Ad essere sincera ho comprato questo libro perchè mi piace molto la scrittura di Per Olov Enquist, uno scrittore scoperto per caso leggendo Il libro di Blanche e Marie... ma non ero troppo entusiasta della trama e l'ho cominciato un po' controvoglia. Invece devo dire che mi ha conquistato. La scrittura è come un soffio, velocissima e risente moltissimo della sua destinazione: la trasposizione cinematografica (...e infatti adesso mi sarebbe venuta la curiosità di vedere il film).
Ho trovato ad esempio davvero suggestiva l'immagine di Hamsun che ormai nella parte dell'accusato e dello sconfitto viene condotto in una saletta cinematografica per vedere un film sui campi di concentramento, con la penna/telecamera che indugia sulle immagini in bianco e nero e sul primo piano dello scrittore..
una citazione (e qui è Enquist che parla): "Infine rimane la domanda più importante: perché? Non per emettere sentenze, che non è più necessario, né per giustificare, che è ancor meno necessario. Ma per noi stessi, come riflessione. Hamsun era un intellettuale, un grande scrittore, uno dei migliori premi Nobel che ci sia dato leggere; perché possiamo ancora leggerlo, e i suoi romanzi sopravviveranno a quelli della maggior parte dei premi Nobel. Solo che volle giocare anche un ruolo politico. [...] Il grande problema non è tuttavia personale, né riguarda solo Hamsun. Il problema non è che egli scelse di giocare un ruolo politico, ma che trasferì la propria autorità da un campo in cui, attraverso l'impegno, l'assiduità, l'ostinazione, il talento e la vivacità intellettuale, era arrivato fin dove era possibile arrivare - cioè il campo della scrittura - a un campo, quello della politica, nel quale non fu in grado di penetrare i problemi. Le virtù sulle quali aveva costruito la sua autorità erano in qualche modo troppo nobili per la politica. Oppure non ne ebbe l'energia. O credette di essere troppo vecchio. O era troppo sordo, troppo stanco, o troppo arrogante o troppo orgoglioso. L'orgoglio! Scelse di guardare lontano, e di non abbassare gli occhi sulla realtà. Il grande sogno europeo di Hitler gli pareva un'idea brillante, alla peggio una costruzione puramente teorica, ma ad ogni modo un'utopia affascinante. Come fosse la realtà, e come sarebbe stata, e la totale mancanza di strumenti democratici all'interno del nazionalsocialismo, e tutto il resto, dal terrorre all'oppressione al razzismo alle camere a gas, lui non lo vide, perché aveva lo sguardo troppo puntato in alto. Questa sindrome di Hamsun è senza tempo. L'altra manifestazione di questa sindrome è la torre d'avorio della scrittura: disinteresse per l'esterno, presunzione e un'indolenza la cui alternativa è l'isolamento. L'altra faccia dell'orgoglio. Anche questo fa parte della sindrome di Hamsun, ed è una malattia piuttosto diffusa nel nostro tempo. Ma in fondo non è che un altro lato dello stesso problema. Essere capaci di vedere lontano, e al tempo stesso guardare vicino, ecco l'alternativa. Non è facile. Ma chi ha mai detto che dovrebbe esserlo. E questa difficoltà è alla fine l'unica cosa che ci rimane"
... insomma mi sembra molto attuale

[Magnús · Rating 4 out of 5]

Þetta er eiginlega kvikmyndahandrit Enquists að hinni frábæru kvikmynd Hamsun sem leikstjórinn Jan Troell gerði 1996. Þar sýndu Max von Sydow og Ghita Nørby stórleik sem hjónin Knut og Marie Hamsun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamsun_...

Enquist gerir þetta handrit að sjálfstæðu bókmenntaverki og heppnast frábærlega. Þetta verða eins og örsögur í sögunni sem í heild skapar listaverk í kvikmynd.