Friday, October 31, 2014

when I get on the subject of my cowbells, I get carried away - Hamsun gets carried away

The key place where Hamsun updates Dostoevsky is in Chapter 7, where the oddball outsider Nagel is at a party arguing about Gladstone.  The British Prime Minister, that Gladstone.  I am not entirely sure why this is the context.  Hamsun loathed England and everything about it, and though this would get him in big trouble forty years later, I do not understand it here.  But it is Dostoevsky I am after, Hamsun’s improvement on Dostoevsky:

“He is a tenacious fighter for good causes, daily assumes personal responsibility for justice, truth, and God.  How could he possibly fail?  Two and two is four, truth has conquered, glory be to God!  Now Gladstone can go beyond two and two.  I have heard him claim, in a budget debate, that seventeen times twenty-three is three hundred ninety-one, and he came off with a smashing, enormous victory…  I stood there checking his arithmetic – three hundred ninety-one – and it was correct, yet I turned it over and over in my mind, saying to myself: Wait a minute.  Seventeen times twenty-three is three hundred ninety-seven!  I knew very well that it was ninety-one, but against all logic I decided on ninety-seven, just to oppose this man, this man who made it his business to be in the right.”  (Ch. 7, ellipses mine)

As Dostoevsky’s Underground Man said, “I agree that two times two makes four is a splendid thing, but if we’re going to lavish praise, then two times two makes five is sometimes also a very charming little thing.”  And given that, imagine the insouciant piquancy of 17 x 23 = 397.

Dostoevsky was at this point arguing directly with Nikolay Chernyshevsky, making Mysteries a direct descendant of Chernyshevsky, which is amusing.

Nagel has “a burning need to preserve my conviction of what is right” even when he is “unquestionably” wrong.  How can Hamsun’s characters be of such interest if they are merely insane?  They are fictionally embodied protests against the Enlightenment.  The idea that is so shocking and destructive is that the wrong answer, wrong decision, even wrong moral act is in some psychological way necessary.  Hamsun is after Dostoevsky one of the great early depicters of the kind of irrationalism that is going to preoccupy so many later writers.

The distance created by the third person allows Mysteries to offer a counter-argument, an implicit defense of rationalism tempered by compassion and community.  Nagel is saved from self-destruction at one point, for example, by what I take to be the kind action of the weakest citizen of the town.    My guess is that, given the ambiguities of the novel, Hamsun is recognizing the power and importance of the irrational without endorsing it.  But who knows.

Nagel himself has an oddly quantitative bent.  Another favorite bit from Mysteries:

“Have I told you about my cowbells? Well, I see you don’t know anything about me.  I’m an agronomist, of course, but I have other interests as well.  Thus far I’ve collected two hundred and sixty-seven cowbells.  I began ten years ago and now, I’m happy to say, I have a very fine collection.”  (Ch. 15)

Although, to pick a single line, this earlier mention of the cowbells, used as a kind of pickup line – he later proposes to the woman he is addressing – can’t be beat:

“But to get back to the point – when I get on the subject of my cowbells, I get carried away.”  (Ch. 9)

We can all get behind that kind of irrationalism.  What else am I doing here?

13 comments:

  1. I am quite annoyed that my university library hasn't put this book in my hands yet. Everyone else is having all the fun. I'm happy to see another WITBD? descendent, too. Should we count that Radiohead song "2+2=5" as well, then?

    Wait, so this Nagel guy is both Myshkin and the Underground Man?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, he's Myshkin and anti-Myshkin. He has trouble synthesizing the two.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Those sentences kind of sum up the novel. I may have to quote you on that.

      "Dostoevsky was at this point arguing directly with Nikolay Chernyshevsky, making Mysteries a direct descendant of Chernyshevsky..."

      This has been the most fun year of reading because of that Chernyshevsky. I am quite fond of him now, silly fellow that he was. I keep telling my mom to read him.

      Delete
    2. I am so glad I pushed that preposterous readalong.

      Delete
    3. One of the best things I've done, reading Chernyshevsky. It was a great idea.

      Delete
  3. I feel that I missed something, not having read Chernyshevsky. I like your view of Hamsun's characters as "fictionally embodied protests against the Enlightenment." The irrational is certainly key to the book.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ivan Turgenev's poem Prayer:
    Every prayer reduces itself to this: Great God, grant that two plus two be not four.

    ReplyDelete
  5. !!!. That's my response to the Turgenev poem, which i had not known. The poem is form 1881, so two of the exclamation points are for the clear and direct link to Chernyshevsky. Séamus, it's not too late.

    The new Vapour Trails post on Mysteries is here, by the way. Maybe I can borrow some of that tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So Turgenev then links back to...Turgenev.

      I've been wondering if Dostoyevsky's was actually the first use of the "two plus two is four" construction in this social dialogue. I have no idea, of course, but sometimes I think the phrase could've already been current before FD made so much of it. That would create new links all over, if it were true.

      Delete
    2. Don't restrict yourself to borrowing, steal if you want!

      Delete
  6. Consider your post stolen (see me newest).

    I think Dostoevsky's contribution was not literally "2+2=5" but rather the rant that contains it. Chernyshevsky of course employed 2+2=4 because it was a cliche, and thus suited his artistic capabilities. Turgenev was too subtle to actually have Bazarov say such a thing. Not older Turgenev, I guess, but the younger one.

    ReplyDelete
  7. How can Hamsun’s characters be of such interest if they are merely insane?

    The paragraph where you go into this is great, and it tickles me that Hamsun's "irrationalism" argument is rationally ripped off of other predecessors' ideas. Too rich! Of course, I found Nagel's cowbells talk more edifying than his Gladstone talk, truth be told.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Isn't that the definition of a "novel of ideas," someone else's ideas draped with fiction?

    ReplyDelete