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''Hunger'' ((ノルウェー語:Sult)) is a novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun published in 1890. Parts of it had been published anonymously in the Danish magazine ''Ny Jord'' in 1888. The novel has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century〔"The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun. They were completely Hamsun's disciples: Thomas Mann and Arthur Schnitzler (...) and even such American writers as Fitzgerald and Hemingway." ''Isaac Bashevis Singer'' in 'Knut Hamsun, Artist of Skepticism', preface to the Robert Bly translation.〕 and an outstanding example of modern, psychology-driven literature. ''Hunger'' portrays the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous manner. ==Description== Written after Hamsun's return from an ill-fated tour of America, ''Hunger'' is loosely based on the author's own impoverished life before his breakthrough in 1890. Set in late 19th-century Kristiania, the novel recounts the adventures of a starving young man whose sense of reality is giving way to a delusionary existence on the darker side of a modern metropolis. While he vainly tries to maintain an outer shell of respectability, his mental and physical decay are recounted in detail. His ordeal, enhanced by his inability or unwillingness to pursue a professional career, which he deems unfit for someone of his abilities, is pictured in a series of encounters which Hamsun himself described as 'a series of analyses.' In many ways, the protagonist of the novel displays traits reminiscent of Raskolnikov, whose creator, Fyodor Dostoevsky, was one of Hamsun's main influences. The influence of naturalist authors such as Émile Zola is apparent in the novel, as is his rejection of the realist tradition. ''Hunger'' encompasses two of Hamsun's literary and ideological ''leitmotifs'': * His insistence that the intricacies of the human mind ought to be the main object of modern literature: Hamsun's own literary program, to describe 'the whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow', is thoroughly manifest in ''Hunger''. *His depreciation of modern, urban civilization: In the famous opening lines of the novel, he ambivalently describes Kristiania as 'this wondrous city that no one leaves before it has made its marks upon him.' The latter is counterbalanced in other Hamsun works, such as ''Mysteries'' (''Mysterier'') (1892) and ''Growth of the Soil'' (''Markens Grøde''), which earned him the Nobel prize in literature but also a reputation for being a proto-National Socialist Blut und Boden author. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hunger (Hamsun novel)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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