he tries to make us believe that his work is chiefly preoccupied with
problems of the second class, his mind is really busy with those of the
first class. The explanation is simple. Nothing helps like love to
bring out the unique qualities of a man's nature. On the other hand,
there is nothing that does more to prevent a man from being himself than
the ruts of habit into which his environment always tends to drive him.
There are two kinds of environment, natural and human. Hamsun appears to
think that the less you have of one and the more of the other, the
better for yourself and for humanity as a whole. The city to him is
primarily concentrated human environment, and as such bad. This phase of
his attitude toward life almost amounts to a phobia. It must be
connected with personal experiences of unusual depth and intensity.
Perhaps it offers a key that may be well worth searching for. Hamsun was
born in the country, of and among peasants. In such surroundings he
grew up. The removal of his parents from the central inland part of
Norway to the rocky northern coast meant a change of natural setting,
but not a human contact. The sea must have come into his life as a
revelation, and yet it plays an astonishingly small part in his work. It
is always present, but always in the distance. You hear of it, but you
are never taken to it.

At about fifteen, Hamsun had an experience which is rarely mentioned as
part of the scant biographical material made available by his reserve
concerning his own personality. He returned to the old home of his
parents in the Gudbrand Valley and worked for a few months as clerk in a
country store--a store just like any one of those that figure so
conspicuously in almost every one of his novels. The place and the work
must have made a revolutionary impression on him. It apparently aroused
longings, and it probably laid the basis for resistances and resentments
that later blossomed into weedlike abundance as he came in contact with