TY - JOUR AU - Kruszelnicki, Michał PY - 2010/10/01 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Irritation, Impudence, Insight: A Critical Reading of Knut Hamsun's På turné JF - Nordlit JA - Nordlit VL - 0 IS - 26 SE - Articles DO - 10.7557/13.1050 UR - https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/1050 SP - 55-69 AB - The article brings the critical reading of Knut Hamsun&rsquo;s <em>P&aring; turn&eacute;</em> &ndash; the collection of Hamsun&rsquo;s three polemic lectures entitled: <em>&ldquo;Norsk litteratur&rdquo;</em>, <em>&ldquo;Psykologisk litteratur&rdquo;</em> and <em>&ldquo;Modelitteratur&rdquo;</em>. These texts make up Hamsun&rsquo;s theoretical and literary manifesto (1891), which up to the present has remained an important introduction to his early and most acclaimed work. In two first sections of the text I follow Hamsun&rsquo;s scornful arguments against Norwegian realistic literature (as represented mainly by &ldquo;the great four&rdquo; writers: Bj&oslash;rnson, Ibsen, Lie and Kielland) in an attempt to concisely present Hamsun&rsquo;s reformatory plan according to which Norwegian literature should be freed from its entanglement in didacticism and social bias and redirected onto a path of a deeper psychology. The final part of the article presents a critical assessment of Hamsun&rsquo;s endeavor. I believe some of Hamsun&rsquo;s opinions in the matter of literature are still up-to-date and thoughtprovoking. These insights, however, have to be separated from Hamsun&rsquo;s hasty generalizations concerning the work of Bj&oslash;rnson, Lie, Kielland, and Ibsen which I defend against Hamsun&rsquo;s malicious argumentation. In the final part of the paper <em>P&aring; turn&eacute;</em> is assessed with regard to the ways of how Hamsun&rsquo;s oeuvre has evolved in time. This approach enables one to grasp some of <em>P&aring; turn&eacute;</em> paradoxes, e.g.: the discrepancy between Hamsun&rsquo;s early literary stance (neo-romanticism and militant, anti-bourgeois views) and the shape his work assumed later on (didacticism, the tendency to morally judge his heroes, support for the vulgar ideology of fascism, etc.). ER -