farther apart. One expresses the passionate revolt of a homeless
wanderer against the conventional routine of modern life. The other
celebrates a root-fast existence bounded in every direction by
monotonous chores. The issuance of two such books from the same pen
suggests to the superficial view a complete reversal of position. The
truth, however, is that Hamsun stands today where he has always stood.
His objective is the same. If he has changed, it is only in the
intensity of his feeling and the mode of his attack. What, above all, he
hates and combats is the artificial uselessness of existence which to
him has become embodied in the life of the city as opposed to that of
the country.

Problems do not enter into the novels of Hamsun in the same manner as
they did into the plays of Ibsen. Hamsun would seem to take life as it
is, not with any pretense at its complete acceptability, but without
hope or avowed intention of making it over. If his tolerance be never
free from satire, his satire is on the other hand always easily
tolerant. One might almost suspect him of viewing life as something
static against which all fight would be futile. Even life's worst
brutalities are related with an offhandedness of manner that makes you
look for the joke that must be at the bottom of them. The word
_reform_ would seem to be strangely eliminated from his dictionary,
or, if present, it might be found defined as a humorous conception of
something intrinsically unachievable.

Hamsun would not be the artist he is if he were less deceptive. He has
his problems no less than Ibsen had, and he is much preoccupied with
them even when he appears lost in ribald laughter. They are different
from Ibsen's, however, and in that difference lies one of the chief
explanations of Hamsun's position as an artist. All of Ibsen's problems