Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Alexis Wingate — The Mystery of Mysteries

To dis­sect Knut Hamsun’s Mysteries as one would an ordi­nary novel is impos­si­ble. This is a book in which noth­ing is quite as it seems to be, and the more closely the reader exam­ines it or tries to make sense of it, the more inex­plic­a­ble it becomes. At the core of the story is Johan Nagel, eas­ily one of the most enig­matic char­ac­ters in lit­er­ary his­tory. His arrival in a small Norwegian town in 1891, with no vis­i­ble aim or pur­pose, is the first piece in a puz­zle that doesn’t ever quite fit together. Moreover, we are left won­der­ing, at the end, if it was actu­ally meant to.

Hamsun’s ini­tial descrip­tion of Nagel paints a por­trait of a rather ordi­nary individual:

“He was below aver­age in height; his face was dark-​​complexioned, with deep brown eyes which had a strange expres­sion, and a soft, rather fem­i­nine mouth. On one fin­ger he wore a plain ring of lead or iron. His shoul­ders were very broad; he was between twenty-​​eight and thirty, but def­i­nitely not older, although his hair was begin­ning to turn gray at the temples.”

Nagel’s belong­ings con­sisted of two small trunks, a suit­case, a satchel, two coats – one of which was fur, a vio­lin case, and a small bag with his ini­tials in pearls. Although the res­i­dents in the town did not wel­come him in a par­tic­u­larly cor­dial man­ner, he is imper­vi­ous to their gen­eral lack of enthu­si­asm. He evades per­sonal ques­tions although he does inform the hotel keeper at the Central Hotel that he’s an agron­o­mist return­ing from trav­els abroad and that he plans to stay for at least the next two or three months. Nevertheless, he leaves both the towns­peo­ple and us read­ers with many ques­tions about where he has come from, what has hap­pened in his past, and why he has come to this par­tic­u­lar coastal town. Though his eva­sive­ness is frus­trat­ing, it is also engag­ing. That which per­plexes us can also be seduc­tive, and Nagel leaves us with more ques­tions than answers from the very beginning.

Yet in spite of a sin­u­ous web of mys­ter­ies that sur­rounds Nagel,  Hamsun man­ages to effec­tively
draw our atten­tion to other sup­port­ing char­ac­ters who inhabit the town as well. Among these char­ac­ters is the minister’s daugh­ter, the beguil­ing, yet naïve, Dagny Kielland, whose engage­ment to a naval offi­cer, Lieutenant Hansen, is being announced with dec­o­ra­tive flags through­out the town when Nagel first appears on the scene.

Another fig­ure who plays a key role in the book is an odd, mis­un­der­stood fel­low, Grogaard, to whom every­one refers as The Midget. Nagel first encoun­ters him in the café at his hotel and imme­di­ately takes an inter­est in the crip­pled man’s plight. In spite of the polite man­ner in which the Midget treats every­one around him, he is con­sid­ered an object of deri­sion. Even his appear­ance evokes scorn:

“The Midget was extremely ugly. He had serene blue eyes but grotesquely pro­trud­ing front teeth, and his gait was con­torted due to an injury. His hair was quite gray; his beard was darker than his hair but so scrag­gly that his skin showed through.”

The very night that Nagel meets this strange crea­ture, he invites him up to his room where the two of them spend sev­eral hours of the evening con­vers­ing. This is one of the first oppor­tu­ni­ties we have to see Nagel’s manip­u­la­tive char­ac­ter at work. He offers The Midget money to assume the pater­nity of a child and presents him with other sly propo­si­tions. When The Midget refuses to accept any of his offers, Nagel gives him ten crowns because he doesn’t agree to his sug­ges­tions. As they talk, Nagel man­ages to extract infor­ma­tion from The Midget, par­tic­u­larly details per­tain­ing to the newly engaged Dagny Kielland. Nagel has already caught sight of a young woman whom he sus­pects is Dagny, and, as The Midget and he chat, it becomes clear to him that his assump­tions were correct.

“Dagny is only twenty-​​three and she is everybody’s dar­ling. She’s pretty, too … and very beau­ti­ful. Everyone is extremely fond of her … and there isn’t another red para­sol in town, as far as I know. She wears her hair in a long, blond braid. If you’ve seen her, you couldn’t for­get. She is dif­fer­ent from every­one else around here.”

Nagel, ever con­niv­ing, man­ages to get The Midget to tell him that the man who took his life, Pastor Jens Karlsen, had him deliver a let­ter to Dagny shortly before his death. In keep­ing with his crafty nature, Nagel uses this infor­ma­tion against Dagny later on. One of the most note­wor­thy aspects of Nagel’s char­ac­ter is his abil­ity to per­suade oth­ers to behave in ways that are con­tra­dic­tory to their basic tem­pera­ment in order to grat­ify his own inter­ests. He also tries to plant doubts in people’s minds regard­ing the char­ac­ters of those they know, hint­ing at their hid­den vices and cor­rupt habits. When Nagel asks The Midget about a young woman, Mina Meek, who has recently been buried in the local ceme­tery, and finds out she was con­sid­ered to be chaste, he writes sug­ges­tive verses on the mar­ble slab on her grave in an attempt to put her virtue in ques­tion. It’s never clear what his motive is in doing this; how­ever, he never expresses any remorse.

Once Nagel deter­mines that he has a sin­cere roman­tic inter­est in Dagny, his behav­ior becomes manic. He seeks her out any­where he can find her, harass­ing and stalk­ing her when­ever an occa­sion presents itself. Their first true encounter takes place in the woods. Nagel cor­ners Dagny unex­pect­edly, tak­ing her by com­plete sur­prise. He offers to carry her red para­sol, but, rather than charm­ing her, he only ends up fright­en­ing her into run­ning away in a panic. Running after her, he calls after her: “Forgive me, I couldn’t help it, I was car­ried away by your beau­ti­ful face!” His excite­ment at being near her sim­ply over­whelmed him. He declares, when recount­ing the meeting:

“I wasn’t going to molest her – I had no such bad inten­tions. I’m sure she’s in love with her lieu­tenant; I would never have dreamed of forc­ing myself on her.”

When Nagel is again in Dagny’s pres­ence, it is dur­ing a Midsummer Night’s gath­er­ing at Dr. and Mrs. Stenersens’ home. He is very skill­ful at con­triv­ing tales about him­self and his life, many of which he claims are true. To the reader, these fan­ci­ful sto­ries bear so lit­tle sem­blance to real­ity that it is impos­si­ble to be even remotely con­vinced of their verac­ity. Yet he is a cap­ti­vat­ing weaver of yarns, and even Dagney is some­what spell­bound by his tales. When Nagel walks home with Dagny at the end of the night, he admits to her that he only made the sto­ries up in hopes of impress­ing her:

“Every word I spoke was meant for you. Do you real­ize that? I know I offended you ter­ri­bly, and I had to make amends. It’s true that I have been in a strange mood all day, but I have made myself appear a good deal worse than I really am, and I’ve been play­ing a devi­ous game most of the time. You see, I had to make you think I was unpre­dictable, that I am in the habit of doing out­ra­geous things, so that you would under­stand and for­give me more easily.”

This is one of our first glimpses at the con­tra­dic­tory and irra­tional thought pat­terns that gov­ern Nagel’s con­duct towards Dagny. While most peo­ple who are infat­u­ated or in love want to show the best side of them­selves to the object of their desire, Nagel seems deter­mined to make as neg­a­tive an impres­sion on Dagny as he pos­si­bly can. After ask­ing her if he fright­ens her, he pro­ceeds to tell her that he was think­ing con­stantly about her even before he met her. Then, he refutes a story he told her ear­lier about him­self and Reinert, the magistrate’s deputy. Even as he dis­misses his pre­vi­ous account as being a lie, he exclaims, “… I know what will hap­pen. I’ll drive you a thou­sand miles away from me.”

It’s as if Nagel has an intrin­sic need to sab­o­tage his own efforts where Dagny is con­cerned, and what is really puz­zling is that she doesn’t sim­ply ignore him. Instead, she makes scathing assess­ments of his behavior:

“You’re the most shame­less per­son I’ve ever met! Imagine, going around say­ing all those ghastly things about your­self with a straight face – it’s so self-​​destructive! What can you pos­si­bly hope to achieve by it? I’ve never heard any­thing so insane! How could you be sure I would ever find out what really hap­pened? Tell me – no, don’t – it would only be another lie! …When you make such care­ful cal­cu­la­tions and fab­ri­cate your story to suit your ends, and then undo every­thing by con­fess­ing your devi­ous­ness – or deceit, as you call it – what am I to think! …Why do you plan your moves so care­fully and then fail to real­ize that you are expos­ing your­self– your own lies?”

The incon­sis­ten­cies in Nagel seem baf­fling, but Hamsun is attempt­ing to make a strong state­ment about the fine line of demar­ca­tion that exists between that which we call “nor­mal” as opposed to “mad” behav­ior. Nagel isn’t merely the pro­to­type of the exis­ten­tial­ist hero, the arche­typal loner. Rather he is a per­son who wears a mask of san­ity in a world that would refuse to accept him for the dis­turbed, unfath­omable indi­vid­ual that he is. He always feels the need to play a part, even when, para­dox­i­cally, he admits that the part he’s play­ing is a lie. At times, it seems he’s merely want­ing to get atten­tion, for, as he con­fesses to Dagny, when she con­fronts him about his duplic­i­tous behavior:

“What it really amounts to is that I force you to notice me. I arouse your curios­ity and make you pay atten­tion to me; I shock you into tak­ing notice. A minute ago, you said you couldn’t fig­ure me out. You said it because you were think­ing about me, which thrills and delights me. I do have a lot to gain, whether you believe me or not.”

Like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hamsun explores the con­cept that a char­ac­ter is not merely at the whim of the plot of a story, but rather that a char­ac­ter brings about the expe­ri­ences that con­sti­tute a story’s plot. Nagel’s expe­ri­ences are less the result of fate and more the direct result of his own spe­cific – and gen­er­ally mis­di­rected – choices. His self-​​destructive streak appears to guide him to a large extent. Although he doesn’t often seem cog­nizant of the fact that he’s mak­ing poor deci­sions when he makes them, he does sum him­self up rather acutely with the sen­tence, “I’m a liv­ing con­tra­dic­tion, and I don’t under­stand it myself.”

Dagny echoes his sen­ti­ments, though she expands on them slightly:

“I just don’t under­stand you. Sometimes when you talk I won­der if you are ratio­nal. Forgive me, but every time I meet you I feel more dis­turbed, more con­fused. No mat­ter what you hap­pen to be talk­ing about, I find that you upset my equi­lib­rium … I’ve never in my life met any­one who con­tra­dicts my basic beliefs as you do. Tell me, how much of what you say do you actu­ally mean?”

As a reader, this last ques­tion is one we find our­selves ask­ing again and again. Yet is there an answer? Is it pos­si­ble that Nagel is deceiv­ing not just oth­ers, but him­self, as well?

One of the rea­sons that Nagel  is such a fas­ci­nat­ing char­ac­ter is because, in spite of his insta­bil­ity and his incon­ceiv­able idio­syn­crasies, he is a bril­liant and beguil­ing indi­vid­ual. He engages in ana­lyt­i­cal dis­cus­sions about Leo Tolstoy and his phil­an­thropic ten­den­cies and the dis­par­ity between what he con­sid­ers to be the friv­o­lity and taw­dri­ness of Guy de Maupassant as opposed to the incan­des­cence (or, as he puts it, “spark”) of Alfred de Musset. Even though he car­ries dirty linen and papers in his vio­lin case rather than a vio­lin, he does play the vio­lin, albeit rather poorly. He is part char­la­tan, part hero. He both cap­ti­vates and repels us. Why? Well, for one thing, a char­ac­ter rarely goes to so lit­tle trou­ble to hide the lack of gen­uine­ness in him­self. Aren’t those who are less than what they seem to be gen­er­ally inclined to mis­lead those around them? How com­mon is it that we peel off our own masks? Nagel may lack many things, but he does pos­sess a cer­tain amount of bravado that the reader can­not help but find admirable. He tells Dagny:

“No, I won’t even bother to defend myself. Call it fraud if you like. Why not? That’s the word for it. To put it stronger still, it’s the low­est kind of decep­tion. All right, I don’t deny it. I am a phony. But we’re all phony to a greater or lesser extent; since that is a fact, one form of deceit is no worse than another.”

He is also vul­ner­a­ble, par­tic­u­larly when it comes to Dagny. Although he invents tales about her being a flirt because he knows he’ll never be able to have her for him­self, at the same time, he is will­ing to give up every­thing for her:

“I’m will­ing to kill myself right here, on the spot, just to rid you of my pres­ence. All you have to do is say the word … Listen to me, in the name of jus­tice! You have such power over me that I am putty in your hands.”

Nagel also attempts to use his wiles to manip­u­late Martha Gude, a white-​​haired, middle-​​aged spin­ster in whom he takes a pecu­liar inter­est. He rarely seems to wait for oth­ers to wel­come him, but rather appears to invite him­self, into their lives. As in the case of Dagny, Nagel’s behav­ior towards Martha also seems like a type of harass­ment. He patron­izes her, manip­u­lates her, and per­suades her into tak­ing money for a bro­ken, two-​​legged chair she owns. Even though he fright­ens her, Martha is drawn to him. When he invites her to go to a town bazaar with him,she reluc­tantly agrees, even offer­ing to “behave very well”. When Dagny sees Nagel at the event, she informs him that she has a “deep dis­trust” of  him and believes him to be “capa­ble of any­thing”. We, as read­ers, can’t help but think she’s right.

In Hunger, the pro­tag­o­nist is a vic­tim of soci­ety, a mere cog in the wheel of human exis­tence. However, in Mysteries, Nagel is some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent. He is both preda­tor and prey, both the oppressed and the oppres­sor. Hamsun told a friend, when speak­ing of what inspired his work, “What inter­ests me are my lit­tle soul’s end­less emo­tions, the spe­cial, strange life of the mind, the mys­ter­ies of the nerves in a hun­gry body.” Perhaps, Nagel isn’t phys­i­cally hun­gry, but we do sense a void within him. It may be that his appetite is for atten­tion and approval. Maybe he is fam­ished for the admi­ra­tion and respect of a world that will never be capa­ble of begin­ning to under­stand him. At one point he says, half-​​defensively, half-​​objectively:

“But it goes with­out say­ing that if you care­fully observe a man for a month and make a point of remem­ber­ing every­thing he says and does, you can always find some­thing to find fault with … This is a small town. I’m rather con­spic­u­ous, and every­where I go, peo­ple rec­og­nize me and watch my every move. And besides, I am a bit odd.”

Odd? Yes. Psychopathic? Perhaps. Captivating? Absolutely. At the end of the book, the reader is left with the sense that Hamsun didn’t intend for Mysteries to be log­i­cal – that its fick­le­ness, its con­tra­dic­tions, its strange­ness, are all part of its charm.

In this reviewer’s Farrar, Straus and Giroux copy of Mysteries, in an after­word dated April 1967, Isaac Bashevis Singer says, “Writers who are truly orig­i­nal do not set out to fab­ri­cate new forms of expres­sion, or to invent themes merely for the sake of appear­ing new. They attain their orig­i­nal­ity through extra­or­di­nary sin­cer­ity, by dar­ing to give every­thing of them­selves, their most secret thoughts and idiosyncrasies.”

Something that the reader can­not ever accuse Hamsun of is imi­ta­tion. Many writ­ers may have fol­lowed in his foot­steps, but, in spite of the fact that he was inspired by a vari­ety of sources, includ­ing August Strindberg and Dostoesvky, he was nonethe­less an absolute orig­i­nal. Introspective, indi­vid­u­al­is­tic, uncom­pro­mis­ing, he was a genius in every sense of the word.

Mysteries, a novel that the American author Henry Miller once said is “closer to me than any other book I have read” was pub­lished in 1892, two years after Hunger and two years before Pan. Hamsun gar­nered the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Growth of the Soil in 1920.

Quotations used in this review are from the 2006 Farrar, Straus and Giroux paper­back ver­sion of Mysteries,
trans­lated from the Norwegian by Gerry Bothmer.

– by Alexis Wingate

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