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#✧ ❝you can’t function without their unceasing praise、 can you
ichishikisentoki · 3 years
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tag dump.
#✧ ❝i don’t really care about this reality that I can’t understand❞ ✧ ooc;#✧ ❝i was able to give it my all because I had my beloved friends❞ ✧ promo;#✧ ❝i'm drawing the next destination❞ ✧ admin art;#✧ ❝but that’s just selfish nonsense、 isn’t it?❞ ✧ verse: main;#✧ ❝I do what I want to do not for any other reason❞ ✧ self#✧ ❝we should have been fixing our eyes on each other❞ ✧ nanako#✧ ❝unending seasons、 crashing seas、 now I wish upon a star as it falls❞ ✧ koutarou#✧ ❝all things must have an end、but you don’t need to grieve❞ ✧ tsubasa#✧ ❝it’s easy to try to cover up those normal cracks with meaningless words、 isn’t it?❞ ✧ junko#✧ ❝after everything has healed、 will you smile for me?❞ ✧ shouki#✧ ❝i would do anything for you、 you know❞ ✧ hayate#✧ ❝a dream will remain a dream for all eternity❞ ✧ karyu#✧ ❝you open your arms to the shadow that stalks you❞ ✧ toryu#✧ ❝there's wounds that you live with while pretending you’re not hurting❞ ✧ anija#✧ ❝so let me stay by your side because i’ll do my very best❞ ✧ chiharu#✧ ❝i'll stitch into my heart the reason for your faith in me❞ ✧ shiki#✧ ❝you can’t function without their unceasing praise、 can you?❞ ✧ hien#✧ ❝tomorrow does not disappear; don’t kill yourself❞ ✧ reiko#✧ ❝if you hide your true nature、 you can’t be torn apart❞ ✧ reiji#✧ ❝in this solitude、 dripping with madness、 i laugh in my scarlet- soaked loneliness❞ ✧ kiku#✧ ❝i feel like i could forget both the pain i endured and the tears that followed❞ ✧ hikaru#✧ ❝you and the days of sunlight filtering through the trees are burned into my vision❞ ✧ aesthetic#✧ ❝i filled up that blank space by painting it black❞ ✧ relatable#✧ ❝those sympathizers are really hyenas❞ ✧ commentary#✧ ❝these memories i’ll never be able to get rid of❞ ✧ headcanon#✧ ❝you keep calling me again and again; your ringtone wails for me to take your call❞ ✧ open#✧ ❝what will be left after this world has begun to crumble?❞ ✧ question#✧ ❝the answer was buried in our memories❞ ✧ answer.#✧ ❝i’ll hold you close so you won’t ever forget、 even if someday my voice can no longer reach you❞ ✧ music#✧ ❝i want to be eternal like you❞ ✧ home
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Black Swan bookgasm review #2: Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun (1917)
It is not uncommon for a writer to become more known for his reputation than actual work. Not that the work isn’t of quality, just that it is easier for the public to fixate on their extreme political beliefs or their tragic life than for the very work that writer should be known. Sylvia Plath is a perfect example, since many non-readers of poetry are aware of her taking her own life by sticking her head in an oven, yet are unfamiliar with her great poetry - the very thing for which she is deservedly celebrated. Such is the same fate of the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun who was well known in his day, for he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920 after having published Growth of the Soil in 1917. 
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In the same way the French have come to wrestle with acknowledging the literary greatness Louis Ferdinand Celine’s in tension with Celine’s Nazi sympathies during World War Two - so Norway has had its own ‘Celine’ problem with Knut Hamsun. Hamsun was well known for having been a Nazi sympathiser, and upon winning the Nobel, he apparently mailed his medal to one of Hitler’s closest associates, Joseph Goebbels. Then, after Hitler’s death, sources claim that he made some sorrowful eulogy, lamenting over the dictator’s life and death. As result, readers have adopted ambivalent feelings for the write - hating him for his politics yet loving him for his work. It should be also noted that Hamsun was in ‘mental decline’ after the war, so one can’t be sure what he would have believed in a healthier state of mind. But all this should be no matter, for what counts is the work, and Growth of the Soil is a work worth the read.
Hamsun had his admirers in the literary world including H.G. Wells who wrote, “I do not know how to express the admiration I feel for this wonderful book without seeming to be extravagant. I am not usually lavish with my praise, but indeed the book impresses me as among the very greatest novels I have ever read. It is wholly beautiful; it is saturated with wisdom and humour and tenderness."
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Though the novel’s setting is in rural Norway, civilisation and its discontents are never far off. There are telegraphs and newspapers. People read. It's not as though this is a bucolic idyll in a sheltered Eden. It is a novel full of contrasts - most obviously between the remote, traditional agrarian life and the rapidly encroaching modern world. This is a very typical Norwegian subject—and typical for many small countries that have gone through such dramatic changes in just a generation or three. Nostalgia looms large.
The book tells the story of Isak and Inger, a married couple seeking to make a living off land that many believe to be a bad business move. We begin with Isak's first steps to create a home in the Norwegian wilds: 'The wilderness was inhabited and unrecognisable, a blessing had come upon it, life had arisen there from a long dream, human creatures lived there, children played about the houses. And the forest stretched away, big and kindly, right up to the blue heights.' He finds a woman, Inger, initially a simple soul, whom life gradually makes more complex. Inger is physically disfigured, but Isak is devoted to her, and the couple works to raise a family and make a life off their land, furrow by furrow, ax blow by ax blow, grows a life. He is the first, the trailblazer.
Gradually other settlers move in  - the idle, the industrious, the promiscuous - creating over decades a community of sorts. This includes the self-seeking Oline, “Never in life would she give in and never her match for turning and twisting heaven and earth to a medley of seeming kindness and malice, poison and senseless words.” One of the most enigmatic characters is Geissler, originally introduced as a decent official with whom Isak has dealings; he helps him at other times and made me wonder if Hamsun was equating him to some Viking deity, “I’m something, I'm the fog as it were, here and there, floating around, sometimes coming like rain on dry ground... There's my son, the lightening.” Years later, men come for the stringing of telegraph wires, the mining of ore in the adjacent mountains. Hamsun presents the incursion of man into nature, the imposition of will on a pristine Nordic first world.
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There's a ‘worldly’ balance to the drama, yet Isak's simple virtues prevail - although he's constantly challenged by events, some beyond his control. There, to a degree, he's protected by his guardian angel of a friend, Geissler, a man as complex and mysterious as Isak is simple - but a man equally as virtuous.
Hamsun’s lovely prose pulls the reader into this pioneer ethic where you rejoice which the construction of a new hay loft and dismiss with contempt the inept farmer who sees to his own comfort before that of his stock. On more than one occasion our protagonists easily reject the offer of a few days’ work for ready cash to tend to the more pressing business of hay that needs cutting or timber that needs hauling, much to the puzzlement of the befuddled capitalists in search of local labour.
Many a Scandinavian will recognise Isak’s inscrutable personality, his lack of expression, his need for time to consider a change. And while Isak plods on in life, prospering by the virtues of hard, unceasing labour, those gathered around him demonstrate every other variation of humanity. There’s the flighty and the money-grabbing, the gossip and the fearful… all stand in contrast to his unerring purpose. By the end of the tale our lone walker has become a wealthy and well-respected margrave, patriarch of the richest farm at the heart of a growing agricultural community, whilst the more speculative endeavours of mining and commerce have boomed and busted around him.
The novel is full of biblical motifs from the Old Testament but it’s not a religious themed story. Rather the book is somewhat critical of city life and culture, especially when it threatens the preservation of land and family values. Hamsun’s far right roots poke through at times with his attitude toward the indigenous Lapps, “maggots”, and fairly non-stop jabs at the less than intellectual bent of the otherwise admirable peasantry.
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Hamsun convincingly writes of a beautiful celebration of the rural life: “Nothing growing there? All things growing there; men and beasts and fruit of the soil. Isak sowing his corn. The evening sunlight falls on the corn that flashes out in an arc from his hand and falls like a dropping of gold to the ground. Here comes Sivert to the harrowing...Forest and field look on. All is majesty and power - a sequence and purpose of things.” One of the most fascinating aspects of the story was the prevalence of infanticide in Norwegian rural culture (the extent of which is truly shocking as much as it is known by Norwegians today).  
Although Hamsun is never preachy, the lure of the city is something that recurs throughout the tale, and although the city itself is not something shown to be evil, it is more or less, just like the rough parts of nature: indifferent to human happiness and fulfilment. And in some sense, the imposition it can cause is inescapable. Though when asked which will outlast, land will always live without the need for humans, for the city is nothing more than peopled wilderness, or: “the wilderness was peopled country now.” Without the people, the wilderness will always return.
Growth of the Soil becomes the growth of generations - the passage of time and the growth of land that makes its way within the creases of one’s face and hands. The people become their land, and by the end of the novel, Isak is balding, and what the narrator calls “a stump of a man.” He is older and not as physically strong as he once was, but he is not beaten. He continues sowing his grain. “Growth of the soil was something different, a thing to be procured at any cost; the only source, the origin of all.” Later this point is expounded further: “’Tis not all that are so, but you are so; needful of earth. ‘Tis you that maintain life. Generation to generation, breeding ever anew; and when you die, the new stock goes on. That’s the meaning of eternal life.”
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In many ways, reading Growth of the Soil is like reading a preview for the later great writers, for one can see American writers like John Steinbeck and Thomas Wolfe have picked amid the themes in this work and made them their own. Yet there are moments when Growth of the Soil can feel a bit verbose for the impatient reader. Yet Hamsun is worth reading because there is no way around him. In the same way what Louis Ferdinand Celine did for French literature, Hamsun tore apart both the grammar and the lexicon of our Norwegian language, mixed high and low, dialect and aristocratic speech, and put all the pieces beautifully together again - in the totally new fashion we call contemporary Norwegian literature. As every Russian writer is rolled out of Gogol’s coat, every Norwegian one is an offspring of Hamsun, admittedly or otherwise.
One can wonder how the story of Norwegian peasants in the 19th century can be relevant today? But as we live so far removed from nature, are so surrounded by words and noise (mostly meaningless) and spend so much time worrying about our psyches, "Growth of the Soil" provides the exact antithesis of our world. It provides a perspective of what is really necessary for life and contentment and what needs to be let go of and what needs to be retained. It is a simple story of simple people, but it is far from shallow. The writing is beautiful and conveys so well the nuances of relationships and the impact of nature on humanity. In all, this is a a very Scandinavian work. Like an iconic Viking ship which combines beauty and simplicity with function, and is capable of navigating both rough seas and shallow rivers, Hamsun's writing has a biblical simplicity that narrates elegantly both life's small and meaningful events as well as its epic arc.
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