of human nature
which is no less deep-reaching because it is apt to find expression in
whimsical or flagrantly paradoxical forms.

Hamsun has just celebrated his sixtieth birthday anniversary. He is as
strong and active as ever, burying himself most of the time on his
little estate in the heart of the country that has become to such a
peculiar extent his own. There is every reason to expect from him works
that may not only equal but surpass the best of his production so far.
But even if such expectations should prove false, the body of his work
already accomplished is such, both in quantity and quality, that he must
perforce be placed in the very front rank of the world's living writers.
To the English-speaking world he has so far been made known only through
the casual publication at long intervals of a few of his books:
"Hunger," "Fictoria" and "Shallow Soil" (rendered in the list above as
"New Earth"). There is now reason to believe that this negligence will
be remedied, and that soon the best of Hamsun's work will be available
in English. To the American and English publics it ought to prove a
welcome tonic because of its very divergence from what they commonly
feed on. And they may safely look to Hamsun as a thinker as well as a
poet and laughing dreamer, provided they realize from the start that his
thinking is suggestive rather than conclusive, and that he never meant
it to be anything else.

EDWIN BJOeRKMAN.

Part I

It was during the time I wandered about and starved in Christiania:
Christiania, this singular city, from which no man departs without
carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.

* * * * *

I was lying awake in my attic and I heard a clock below strike six. It
was already broad daylight, and people had begun to go up and down the
stairs. By the door where the wall of the room was papered with old
numbers of the _Morgenbladet_, I could distinguish clearly a notice
from the Director of Lighthouses, and a little to the left of that an
inflated advertisement of Fabian Olsens' new-baked bread.

The instant I opened my eyes I began, from sheer force of habit, to
think if I had anything to rejoice over that day. I had been somewhat
hard-up lately, and one after the other of my belongings had been taken
to my "Uncle." I had grown nervous and irritable. A few times I had
kept my bed for the day with vertigo. Now a