Pan, by Knut Hamsun

December 13, 2008 by Nekkidblogger
Filed under: Fiction, Knut Hamsun, Nobel Prize Winner, Norwegian writer, book review

I enjoy reading Knut Hamsun, the famous Norwegian Nobel Prize winner in Literature. He writes elegantly, lyrical, and beautiful, and I like his sense of humor as well.

Pan: From Lieutenant Thomas Glahn’s Papers (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) is about Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, living in a hunting cabin up in the Northern part of Norway, along with his dog, Aesop. He lives not far from the village Sirius, and interacts with people there. Then something happens which turns his life upside down.

Pan is a wonderful Knut Hamsun book. Otto Weineger claimed it was the most beautiful book ever written. In Pan, Hamsun is concerned with the beauty of nature and our relationship to it. His descriptions are beautiful. His mastery of language, and his very conscious use of it, is intruiging. He uses language to underscore what is happening. For instance, when Glahn is alone, his sentences are long, drawn out, but when he talks to women, his sentences are short, distinct, intense. In addition, the story in Pan is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.

Pan, in my humbe opinion, is one of the most interesting books written by Hamsun, a true masterpiece. At the center of the book is the eternal battle of the sexes. The book is full of pure poetry and “lyric outbursts”. Pan is also, deservedly, one of the most widely known works by Knut Hamsun.

Read more about Knut Hamsun at Scandinavianbooks.com.