is struggling for his existence. In "A Wanderer Plays with Muted
Strings" the artist is beginning to assert himself more and more, and
that he had conquered in the meantime we know by "Benoni" and "Rosa"
which appeared in 1908. The crisis was past, but echoes of it were heard
as late as 1912, the year of "Last Joy," which well may be called
Hamsun's most melancholy book. Yet that is the book which seems to have
paved the way and laid the foundation for "The Growth of the Soil"--just
as "Dreamers" was a sketch out of which in due time grew "Children of
the Time" and "Segelfoss Town."

Hamsun's form is always fluid. In the two works now published it
approaches formlessness. "Under the Autumn Star" is a mere sketch,
seemingly lacking both plan and plot. Much of the time Knut Pedersen is
merely thinking aloud. But out of his devious musings a purpose finally
shapes itself, and gradually we find ourselves the spectator of a
marital drama that becomes the dominant note in the sequel. The
development of this main theme is, as I have already suggested,
distinctly Conradian in its method, and looking back from the ironical
epilogue that closes "A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings," one marvels at
the art that could work such a compelling totality out of such a
miscellany of unrelated fragments.

There is a weakness common to both these works which cannot be passed up
in silence. More than once the narrator falls out of his part as a tramp
worker to rail journalistically at various things that have aroused his
particular wrath, such as the tourist traffic, the city worker and
everything relating to Switzerland. It is done very naively, too, but it
is well to remember how frequently in the past this very kind of naivete
has associated with great genius. And whatever there be of such
shortcomings is more than balanced by the wonderful feeling for and