Голод (Sult) Кнута Гамсуна

1890 novel by Knut Hamsun

Hunger (Sult) is a novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun published in 1890 by P. G. Philipsens Forlag. The novel has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of modern, psychology driven literature. Hunger portrays the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous manner.

The novel's first person protagonist, an unnamed vagrant with intellectual leanings, probably in his late twenties, wanders the streets of Norway's capital, Kristiania (Oslo), in pursuit of nourishment. Over four episodes he meets a number of more or less mysterious persons, the most notable being Ylajali, a young woman with whom he engages in a mild degree of physical intimacy. He exhibits a self created code of chivalry, giving money and clothes to needy children and vagrants, not eating food given to him, and turning himself in for stealing. Essentially self destructive, he thus falls into traps of his own making, and with a lack of food, warmth and basic comfort, his body turns slowly to ruin. Overwhelmed by hunger, he scrounges for meals, at one point nearly eating his own (rather precious) pencil and his finger. His social, physical and mental states are in constant decline. However, he has no antagonistic feelings towards 'society' as such, rather he blames his fate on 'God' or a divine world order. He vows not to succumb to this order and remains 'a foreigner in life', haunted by 'nervousness, by irrational details'. He experiences an artistic and financial triumph when he sells a text to a newspaper, but despite this he finds writing increasingly difficult. At one point in the story, he asks to spend a night in a prison cell, posing as a well to do journalist who has lost the keys to his apartment. In the morning he cannot bring himself to reveal his poverty or even partake in the free breakfast provided to the homeless. Finally, as the book comes to a close, when his existence is at an absolute ebb, he signs on to the crew of a ship leaving the city.

An extract from Hunger was first published anonymously in the Danish magazine Ny Jord in November 1888. After its full publication in 1890, Hamsun made revisions to the novel's text in subsequent editions in 1899, 1907 and 1916. Instead, it was the widely available sixth (May 1921) and later Knopf printings of her translation that were censored, resulting in 263 instead of 266 pages. Stefano Evangelista notes that the Egerton translation "has withstood the passage of time very well" and Tore Rem notes that it is "arguably more radical than Lyngstad's translation". A translation by Robert Bly was published in 1967. Lyngstad stated that Bly missed the mixing of the present and past tenses of the original, suggestive of a febrile mind, instead using a uniform past tense. He also noted that Bly's translation confused Oslo's streets and places. The 1996 translation by Sverre Lyngstad has been considered by many to be definitive. A new translation by Terence Cave was published in 2023 by Oxford World's Classics.