Knut Hamsun

Knut Hamsun in hunger


Upon meeting the lovely lady; desire to irritate her

Strange as I was at this instant to myself, so absolutely a prey to peculiar invisible inner influences, nothing
occurred around me without my observing it. A large, brown dog sprang right across the street towards the
shrubbery, and then down towards the Tivoli; he had on a very narrow collar of German silver. Farther up the
street a window opened on the second floor, and a servant-maid leant out of it, with her sleeves turned up, and
began to clean the panes on the outside. Nothing escaped my notice; I was clear-headed and ready-witted.
Everything rushed in upon me with a gleaming distinctness, as if I were suddenly surrounded by a strong
light. The ladies before me had each a blue bird's wing in their hats, and a plaid silk ribbon round their necks.
It struck me that they were sisters.

Thoughts dart between the window and the street, and not a word is spoken. She turns round, I feel a wrench
in me, a delicate shock through my senses; I see a shoulder that turns, a back that disappears across the floor.
That reluctant turning from the window, the accentuation in that movement of the shoulders was like a nod to
me. My blood was sensible of all the delicate
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on bad luck

What was it that ailed me? Was the hand of the Lord turned against me? But why just against me? Why, for
that matter, not just as well against a man in South America? When I considered the matter over, it grew more
and more incomprehensible to me that I of all others should be selected as an experiment for a Creator's
whims. It was, to say the least of it, a peculiar mode of procedure to pass over a whole world of other humans
in order to reach me. Why not select just as well Bookseller Pascha, or Hennechen the steam agent?


ON NOT ABLE TO FIND A SEAT IN PARK AND HUNGER

The thought of God began to occupy me. It seemed to me in the highest degree indefensible of Him to
interfere every time I sought for a place, and to upset the whole thing, while all the time I was but imploring
enough for a daily meal.
I had remarked so plainly that, whenever I had been hungry for any length of time, it was just as if my brains
ran quite gently out of my head and left me with a vacuum--my head grew light and far off, I no longer felt its
weight on my shoulders, and I had a consciousness that my eyes stared far too widely open when I looked at
anything.
I sat there on the seat and pondered over all this, and grew more and more bitter against God for His
prolonged inflictions. If He meant to draw me nearer to Him, and make me better by exhausting me and
placing obstacle after obstacle in my way, I could assure Him He made a slight mistake. And, almost crying
with defiance, I looked up towards Heaven and told Him so mentally, once and for all
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