Growth of the Soil has many virtues. The novel is endearing yet couragous enough to deal with subject-matter that is both substantial and controversial. Similarly, Hamsun's skills of characterisation and his descriptive style are sufficient to evince an emotional reponse from the reader at certain junctures, for example, Inger's act of infanticaide and its consequences, and Isak's realisation that his strength is in decline. The prose style is both at tines sharp and clever. The dialogue, particularly in the first half of the novel, is quite charmingly idiomatic; Isak's truncated vocabulary appears to mirror his status as a biblical Adam figure.

Hamsun's descriptive style contributes toward an evocative account of his rural native Norway, whilst the novel's shifts in perspective and brief moments of rumination are reminiscent of Steinbeck at his most powerful. Isak's agrarian preoccupations binds indelibly the progress of the novel to the passing seasons, creating an impression of time not any less efficacious than that achieved in another, in some ways similar epic; One Hundred Years of Solitude.

But Hamsun verges on didacticism. The reader is pushed relentlessly toward the Rousseauian-sounding idea that the self-reliant exploiter of the soil, in this case Isak, is somehow morally superior, and the related view that the city - urban living - leads to moral decay and a rather superficial, meaningless state of existence. Take, for example, the difference in the way Hamsun chooses to depict Inger's and Barbro's attitude towards their respective acts of infantiside. The former is much more sympathetic, whereas Barbro is depicted as being callously indifferent. Barbro has, of course, been infected by the vast metropolis that was nineteenth century Bergen.

Overall, it's a good book. But no one likes being preached to, especially by someone with ideological sympathies as dubious as Hamsun's.

In regard to this edition: the typeface is too bold making the text difficult to read. The cover picture's quite nice though. ( )

I loved this book, but I found it very difficult to write about. It is a book of extremes. The extreme of agrarian hard work leads to simple yet happy lives. The extreme of urban life leads to corruption, overindulgence, and shame. We don't see many explicit examples of city life, but we do see folk who return to the farm from the city and are none the better for their time away.

For most of the book we follow Isak who walks into a wild country with nothing but a few simple farming implements, watch him as he tills fields, builds a simple shelter, acquires animals, finds a wife, raises children, and sees his farm grow larger and more prosperous year after year. We see the land around him slowly start to fill in with other farmers. We see Isak and all around him mature and grow older.

Those who stay on the farm are happy, but one wonders how interesting their lives are. This life does not leave much room for fun. Music and dancing are for very special occasions. Coffee is a luxury. To work and to work and to work -- that is where joy is to be found. Simple pleasures such as they are do not seem so pleasurable.

There is no nature for nature's sake here. Nature is to be thanked for providing water and soil and forage and timber, but all of nature is meant to be shaped by the people who inhabit it.

Despite all my protestations, there is something grand and powerful and wonderful in this book, in its characters, in the telling of the tale. I am both drawn to and repelled by the premise. I agree and disagree at the same time. The one thing I do know: I would read this book again. And again. ( )

Les anmeldelsen:

http://no.librarything.com/work/14029... ( )

"Have read Fathers and Children by Turgenieff and the 1st Vol. of Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. Fathers and Ch-en isn't his best stuff by a long way. Some swell stuff in it but it can never be as exciting again as when it was written and that's a hell of a criticism for a book... Buddenbrooks is a pretty damned good book. If he were a great writer it would be swell. When you think a book like that was published in 1902 and unknown in English until last year it makes you have even less respect, if you ever had any, for people getting stirred up over Main Street, Babbit and all the books your boy friend Menken [H.L. Mencken] has gotten excited about just because they happen to deal with the much abused Am. Scene. Did you ever read [Knut Hamsun's] The Growth of the Soil? And then for Christ sake to read Thom Boyd..."
Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
Selected Letters, pg. 176

Reminiscent of "Giants in the Earth", "Cry the Beloved Country", "How Green was my Valley", also "House" by Tracy Kidder. Change due to humanity's influence, mining specificaly, but also change through growth. Classic figures- Geisslet "god" Brede "devil" etc. Multi leveled. ( )