Hamsun in the 1890s and Pan

Robert Ferguson on Pan

Pan is one of the most beautiful short novels ever written, an experience rather than a book, written in a controlled prose so tight, so exact, that translation cannot diminish it. Hamsuns prose here has an almost hypnotic effect, an effect heightened by the form of the chapters which often begin in a floating, unspecific, dream-like way. There is a not a single word in excess, nor a word lacking here; this is a seamless Arta book that reaches effortlessly and deeply into the soul.

Pan set in Nordland

The midnight sun

Nordland

Writing Pan
Hamsun began writing Pan in Paris in the autumn of 1893, and completed it during the late summer of 1894 in Kristiansand on an ex tended trip back to Norway. Hamsun spent substantial parts of 1893-95 in Paris and there he met the Swedish writer, August Strindberg, who greatly influenced him.

Pan: From the Papers of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn

Lasse Kolsrud in 1995 film

Pan 1894
This edition is dedicated to Johan Nilsen Nagel
Hamsun dedicated Pan to the lead fictional character of his previous novel Mysteries. Nagel and Glahn are both moody, charismatic strangers who show up in Norwegian coastal towns for a period, then disappear again.

Narrative timelines
A first-person narrative The manuscript is allegedly written in 1857 when Glahn is 30. Glahn is in a city now, most likely Kristiania (Oslo) The main story takes place 2 years earlier in 1855, from spring to fall in Nordland when Glahn was 28.

Seasonal story arc

The main story is in 1855. Glahn describes the changes in nature and light from April to August in the fictional coastal town of Sirilund in North Norway. The cycle is from spring to fall.

Lieutenant Thomas Glahn

Glahn is an educated officer from southern Norway. He actually belongs to the proper bourgeois social class. He travels up to northern Norway for inspiration to be a writer-poet. His narrative displays an almost Rousseau-like attempt to return to a pre-civilization harmony and unity with nature. Its a romantic project in which he plays both a true son of the forest and a sensitive, suffering artist.

Two green feathers trigger this long flashback narrative

Pan

In Greek mythology, an arcadian god of pastures, forests, flocks and herds. Pan is half goat (lower part) and half man (upper part). He has horns and plays a musical pipe with seven reeds.

Pan and wood nymphs

Pan
Glahns powder horn is in the figure of Pan, the satyr and fertility god. Glahns gun seems to also have a phallic power in the novel.

Edvarda Mack
Edvarda is 20 years old in 1855 story. She has no mother and has been raised by a single parent. Herr Mack sees Glahn as a potential proper suitor and husband for Edvarda so that she doesnt marry down below her station in life. His search for a husband for her has been going on for awhile.

Glahn the seducer

Glahn appears to have sex with working class women only Henriette and Eva A kind of sterility, avoiding commitment, family responsibilities. Glahns narcissism his Don Juan complex.

Chapter 13 in the meadow

Glahn appears to have a fear of deflowering Edvarda, even when she appears to be ready and eager. Unlike Henrietta and Eva, Edvarda is presumed to be a virgin. The madonna/whore dichotomy again? Keeping Edvarda a Madonna?

Herr Mack
Mack the business mogul who rules his fiefdom. His diamond clip and pointed shoes. Mack and Glahn are rivals in a competition of power. The race for the shortest way to the hut for example. Class exploitation. Mack can exploit his employees, as he does with Eva. Such a relationship was not unusual.

Glahns male rivals

Herr Mack The Doctor The Baron Symbolically taking masculinity from his rivals. Battles with all three; Glahn has to dominate

Evas violent death

Accident or premeditated murder?

An unreliable narrator?
Is Glahn the hunter a true son of the forest as he claims? How self-serving is his narrative? Hamsun the author keeps revealing between the lines his narrators oversensitive, nostalgic, urban sensibility. Glahn possesses an intense subjectivity. He projects his own thoughts and feelings onto nature and he thinks can read other peoples souls. How many of Glahns traits are genuine versus affected? How much can we trust his claims?

Questions
Glahns hut exists on the edge between the forest and society, between nature and culture. How does the educated, professional-class Lt. Glahn become a hunter and a son of nature? In what ways does he connect to and identify with the natural world and the animalistic? What significance might the mythological character Pan hold in the narrative?

More questions
The novel is arguably as much about power as it is about love. How much is Glahn a nave, innocent nature lover and how much is he a near-pathological megalomaniac? His turf battles with the other male characters and his relationships with women. Does Glahns hypersubjectivity and extreme sensitivity have a darker and more destructive side that hes willing to admit to?

1995 Norwegian film version