FICTION: Vast Drolley

Vast Drollery

MYSTERIES—Knut Hamsun— Knopf ($2.50). “In the middle of the summer of 1891 a little Norwegian coast town was the scene of a series of most unusual events. A Stranger turned up in the town, a certain Nagel, a noteworthy and original charlatan, who did a heap of odd things and vanished again as suddenly as he had come.”

Thus Author Hamsun begins his examination of a mad, melancholy Dane, Johan Nagel, and the heap of odd things he did. He fell in love with Dagny Kielland, who was engaged to marry a naval officer. He made friends with pauperish Minutten. He mystified the townspeople by never explaining his visit.

Then things began to go badly for him. Dagny Kielland was unable to find in Nagel any of the well rubbed familiar surfaces, common to all men, by which people are accustomed to identify, if not to understand, other people. He remained a mystery to her. Nagel realized that it was impossible for her to penetrate the dark secrets of his mind. With the teeth of despair already in his heart, he began to see madness waddling toward him like an enormous lizard. “Then he made for the harbor at a run, the back of his waistcoat showing white as he ran. He was down on the quays, ran on to the farthest pier, and jumped straight into the sea. ”

A few bubbles came up.”

Author Hamsun wrote the tale before he had reached the stature that put a Nobel Prize (1920) in his grasp for Growth of the Soil. He had, however, the same instinct for completeness, totality; the same slow scrutiny which, if you wait long enough, turns out to the vast drollery of a cosmic unbeliever.