Sunday 22 November 2009

My Favourite Fascist Writer


Who is your favourite fascist writer? I quite like the work of the madly eccentric French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline, particularly Journey to the End of the Night, but my absolute favourite really has to be Knut Hamsun, the great Norwegian writer and Nobel laureate. My, oh, my, how could one possibly like fascist writing? But that’s just the point: it’s not fascist writing; it’s a fascist writing and, yes, there is a huge difference between the two. Good writing and good art does not always need good people as creators.

I discovered Hamsun in my mid-teens, working my way through all of his early work with huge enthusiasm; books like Hunger, Pan, Victoria, and Mysteries, all written in a wonderful, taut and economical style, all deeply engaging at a level of simple emotion, full of mood and mystery. I moved on to his later work but found it a little too ponderous for my taste. I did not really like The Growth of the Soil overmuch, with its agrarian mysticism, but it was well enough thought of to win him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920.

So much for the artist; now let’s have a look at the man. I’ve been reading Knut Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissenter, a warts and all biography by Sletten Kollen. Hamsun wasn’t a good man; he was, rather, a thoroughly nasty human being, an obsessive, egotistical monster in the same way that Céline, or, say, Wagner was an obsessive, egotistical monster.

With people like this one gets the feeling that politics is really only of secondary concern, a way of expressing one’s peculiarities, and Hamsun had more peculiarities than most. He was a reactionary who hated the modern world; who hated and envied Henrik Ibsen as much as he loved and admired Adolf Hitler. He also hated the Anglo-Saxons, or, to express this in another way, he was an ass about AS. :-))

For Hamsun Hitler offered hope for the revival of Nordic culture. He was one of the few to welcome the German invasion of Norway in 1940, championing Vidkun Quisling, the traitor who headed a collaborationist government, and looking forward to the prospect of his country becoming part of Greater Germany. Even the end of the war brought no change of mood. He remained consistent in his support for Hitler, refusing to apologise for his past sympathies. Many of his fellow citizens were so outraged that they sent his books directly to the author as a mark of their displeasure. His local post office found it difficult to cope with the volume of the volumes!

Still, that’s the man and great art will always transcend the messenger. Hamsun is long dead and passions have died away It’s nice to know that the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth, which falls this year, is being widely celebrated across his native land.



4 comments:

  1. I read "Pan" recently on your recommendation. The protagonist initially struck me as seeming quite Aspie, however this changed later in the book as he suddenly gained an ability to clearly understand the effects of his actions. I found this to be inconsistent, even bearing in mind the alternative interpretation of him simply being a spoilt brat.

    A much better writer who shares a certain romantic mysticism is Herman Hesse. There is/was a collection of his short stories called "Strange News from another Star" which are a good introduction. You may have heard of "Steppenwolf" (the origin of the band's name) and "Demian" (which from memory is quoted on the cover of Santana's album "Abraxas"). I however would recommend "Siddartha", "The Prodigy" and "The Glass Bead Game", the latter of which I feel sure was inspired by the game of Go, (also known as Wei-chi, or Baduk).

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  2. Did I recommend Pan to you, WG? I can't remember. :-)

    I've peaked at Hesse, WG, well Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game, to be exact. The former I quite enjoyed, but I found the latter insufferably dull, so much so I stopped half way. It was a few years ago now, when I was in my late teens. I'll maybe have another go.

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  3. Great taste. Today there is renewed interest in KH in nationalist circles in Europe and N. America.

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  4. Thanks, LBT. I just think he is such a good writer.

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