Hamsun’s “mal du siècle”: (Re)reading Pan through Chateaubriand's René

Tom Conner

doi:10.7557/13.5626

Authors

Tom Conner St. Norbert College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5626

Keywords:

Crisis of comparative literature, Hamsun;, Chateaubriand;, Pan;, René;, “mal du siècle .ˮ;

Abstract

My paper expands on several conference themes, specifically “geographical places” and “boundaries,” and will explore the elasticity and intertextual implications of both terms as they apply to national literatures and writers, as well as their porous nature in literary studies (including theory, history, and criticism, according to René Wellek’s classic and still widely accepted triptych of literary studies [Wellek x]). Specifically, I will examine the resonance of the Romantic malaise known in France as “le mal du siècle” and how it might inform a reading of Knut Hamsun’s novel Pan (1894) and shed light on the more than eccentric behavior of its main character, Lieutenant Glahn. The French Romantic writer Chateaubriand (1768-1848), whose slender novel René (1802), with which “le mal du siècle” is most closely associated, represents the epitome of the Romantic hero, who evidently had not drawn his last breath when Hamsun published Pan almost one century later. Upon a closer reading of the two novels, there is more than enough to warrant a comparison. Glahn and René are archetypes of a similar malady afflicting overly sensitive, generally upper-class young men of a nervous and indeed neurotic

disposition.

Author Biography

Tom Conner, St. Norbert College

Tom Conner is Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin. He has served as Visiting Professor at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and at Nihon University, Japan. Tom is the author of five books; his last book, The Dreyfus Affair and the Emergence of the French Public Intellectual, 1898-1914, was published spring 2014. He is currently working on a two-volume book about left-wing French and German intellectuals in the 1930s.

References

Arnold, Matthew. “On the Modern Element in Literature.” Inaugural lecture delivered at Oxford
University, November 1857.
Auster, Paul. “Introduction.” Pan. Trans. Robert Bly. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967.
Baldensperger, Fernand. L'avant-guerre dans la littérature française, 1900-1914. Paris: Payot,1919.
Bartnæs, Morten. “Øystein Rottem om Pan. Person og påvirkning.” In Nordlit 17 (Spring 2005): 45-84. https://doi.org/10.7557/13.1874
Bassnett, Susan. Comparative Literature. A Critical Introduction. New York: Blackwell, 1993.
Bigelow, Benjamin. The Life of the Soul: Vitalism and the Invisible in the Norwegian Fin de Siècle (diss). University of California-Los Angeles, 2017.
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of Poetry. Second edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Buttry, Dolores. “Knut Hamsun and the ‘Rousseauian Soul’.” In Scandinavica 19 (1980): 121-150.
Chateaubriand, François-René de. René. In Poèmes, Pièces et Proses. Eds. Peter Schofer, Donald
Rice and William Berg. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
____. René. Trans. A. S. Kline. www.poetryintranslation.com
_____. Atala and René. Trans. Benjamin Lester Bowen. Scott, Foresman and Company, 1901.
_____. Les Mémoires d’Outre-tombe. Ed. Maurcie Levaillant and Georges Moulinier. Bibliothèque de la Pléaide. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1951.
Darcos, Xavier, Brigitte Agard and Marie-France Boireau. Le XIXe siècle en Littérature. Paris: Hachette, 1986.
De Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading. Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979.
Ferguson, Robert. Enigma. The Life of Knut Hamsun. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987.
Futures of Comparative Literature. A ten-year report published by the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). Ed. Ursula K. Heise. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Gay, Peter. “The Complete Romantic.” In Horizon No 8. Vol 2 (1966): 12-19.
Guyard, Marius-François. La littérature comparée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951.
Hamsun, Knut. Pan. Translated and with an introduction by Sverre Lyngstad. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
_____. Kratskog. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Bohhandels Forlag, 1903.
He, Chengzhou. “Performing Manhood: Glahn and the Masculinity Crisis in Hamsun’s Pan.” In Nordlitt 38 (2016): 36-47. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0042-102825
Hoog, Armand. “Who Invented the mal du siècle?” Yale French Studies 13 (1954): 42-51. https://doi.org/10.2307/2929179
Hovstø, Camilla. “Staten punger ut til Hamsuns bibliotek.ˮ In Grimstad Adressetidende. September 7, 2019: 16.
Hugo, Victor. Les Travailleurs de la Mer. Paris Gallimard, 1866.
Humphries, Jefferson. “Decadence.” In A New History of French Literature. Ed. Denis Hollier, 785-788. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989.
Klette, Mari. “Funn fra en bokhistorisk underssøkelse av Knut Hamsuns Kratskog (1903).” Den 7. internasjonale Hamsun-konferanse 2019. Tromsø, September 2019.
Kolloen, Ingar Sletten. Hamsun. Knut Hamsun. Dreamer and Dissenter. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. Originally entitled Drømmer of Erobrer and abridged from the volumes Hamsun Svermeren (2003) and Hamsun Eroberen (2004) by Ingar Sletten Kolloen.
Kumar Dass, Bijay, ed. Comparative Literature. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2001.
Lagarde, André et Laurent Michard. XIXe Siècle. Les Grands auteurs du programme. Vol 5. Paris: Bordas, 1964.
Mayeur, Jean-Marie. Les Débuts de la troisième République, 1871-1898. Paris: Seuil, 1973.
McAuliffe, Mary. Dawn of the Belle Époque. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011.
McGuinness, Patrick, ed. Symbolism, Decadence and the Fin de Siècle: French and European Perspectives. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000
Musil, Robert. A Man Without Qualities. New York: Coward- McCann, Inc., 1953.
Musset, Alfred de. Confession d’un enfant du siècle. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1993.
Næss, Harald. Knut Hamsun. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.
A New History of French Literature. Ed. Denis Hollier. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989.
Peyre, Henri. Qu’est-ce que le romantisme? Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971.
Richard, Jean-Pierre. Paysage de Chateaubriand. Paris: Seuil, 1967. https://doi.org/10.14375/NP.9782020026116
Rottem, Øysten. Hamsun og fantasiens triumph. Oslo: Gyldendal, 2002.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.
_____. Discours sur l’Inégalité. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1964.
_____. Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1964.
Sæbø, Ann. “Syklisk tid og panteistisk rom i Hamsun’s religionssyn.” In Hamsun i Tromsø III. Hamarøy: Hamsun-Selskapet, 2003.
Schaffer, Talia. Literature and Culture at the Fin de Siècle. New York: Longman, 2007.
Schorske, Carl. Fin-de-siècle Vienna. Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage, 1981.
Starobinski, Jean. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. La Transparence et l’obstacle. Paris: Plon, 1957.
Von Schnurbein, Stefanie. “Hvorfor leser men Hamsun?” In Hamsun Holl Hammarøy. Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2010.
_____. “Failed Seductions: Crises of Masculinity in Knut Hamsun’s Pan and Knut Faldbakken’s Glahn.” In Scandinavian Studies. No 2, vol. 73 (Summer 2001): 147-164.
Van Tieghem, Paul. Le Romantisme dans la littérature européenne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948.
Van Tieghem, Philippe. Le Romantisme Français. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1944.
Weber, Eugen. France, Fin de siècle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Zagar, Monika. Knut Hamsun. The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance. Seattle: The University of
Washington Press, 2009.
___. Hamsuns Kunst og Politikk. Uforenlige størrelser eller to sider av same sak?” In Hamsun Holl Hammarøy. Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2010.