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A review by spectracommunist
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
5.0
“I suffered no pain, my hunger had taken the edge off; instead, I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all. I put my legs up on the bench and leaned back, the best way to feel the true well-being of seclusion. There wasn't a cloud in my mind, nor did I feel any discomfort, and I hadn't a single unfulfilled desire or craving as far as my thought could reach. I lay with open eyes in a state of utter absence from myself and felt deliciously out of it.”
When I was reading this, I came to an afternoon scene where the protagonist describes his alienation at the Karl Johann Street of Christiana (Oslo, Norway) and I suddenly remembered that even Edward Munch had painted on that street and indeed his most famous "The Scream" was from that Christiana collection. The juxtaposition was so quite something. However, Munch painted his subjects on an evening scene and thus the combination looks quite complementary.
This book is a drastic account in the heights of despair and lowest of dignity in a semi-autobiographical sense of the author's own experience of tormented starving in Norway. As it turns out that what we call morality, is nothing but a luxury that people rotting on streets can't afford. And it even starts to seem that the major part of our public identity is based on the fortune that we have, and without that one is left alone like a stray dog to rot alone. And suffer endlessly for suffering's sake reasoned by sheer nihilism and yet one doesn't get killed but suffers indefinitely. This chronicles something that is so devoid and hollow of any privileges imaginable, whilst on the other end are the heaps and heaps of opulence and yet nothing changes. Only a few luckier get access to both sides.
When I was reading this, I came to an afternoon scene where the protagonist describes his alienation at the Karl Johann Street of Christiana (Oslo, Norway) and I suddenly remembered that even Edward Munch had painted on that street and indeed his most famous "The Scream" was from that Christiana collection. The juxtaposition was so quite something. However, Munch painted his subjects on an evening scene and thus the combination looks quite complementary.
This book is a drastic account in the heights of despair and lowest of dignity in a semi-autobiographical sense of the author's own experience of tormented starving in Norway. As it turns out that what we call morality, is nothing but a luxury that people rotting on streets can't afford. And it even starts to seem that the major part of our public identity is based on the fortune that we have, and without that one is left alone like a stray dog to rot alone. And suffer endlessly for suffering's sake reasoned by sheer nihilism and yet one doesn't get killed but suffers indefinitely. This chronicles something that is so devoid and hollow of any privileges imaginable, whilst on the other end are the heaps and heaps of opulence and yet nothing changes. Only a few luckier get access to both sides.