- Paperback: 131 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; Reprint edition (24 Sep 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0141180676
- ISBN-13: 978-0141180670
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.9 x 1.1 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,057,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
First published in 1894, Knut Hamsun's Pan is former lieutenant Thomas Glahn's retrospective narrative of his life and adventures in the Norwegian woods. A man of fascinating complexity, Glahn is in some respects a modern successor to a long line of "superfluous" men in western literature, an heir to Goethe's Werther and the protagonists of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky.
But this portrait of a man rejecting the claims of bourgeois society for a Rousseauian embrace of Nature and Eros, explores the veiled mysteries of the unconscious by means of thoroughly modern techniques. Pan's quasi-musical modulations of pace and rhythm, its haunting use of leitmotifs which contract and distend time, its startling versions of myth and legend, and its ecstatic evocations of nature in its various phases and moods, all attest to the novel's Modernist innovations.
Pan provides a lyrical, yet disturbing analysis of love and the recesses of the psyche. This superb new translation restores the power and virtuosity of Hamsun's original and includes an informative introduction.
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19 reviews
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful
and what is human nature? the wild? the cultured?
1 July 2002
Format:Paperback
Pan begins as a nature story - detailed, lush, knowledgeable descriptions of nature, of living a solitary existence, of feeding off the forest and sea. Phrases such as "there was a sweet sulphurous smell from the old leaves rotting in the woods" lull the reader into an expectation of a pastoral romance novel. This is anything but. It is, rather, an exploration of the relationship of the solitary Lt. Glahn with two women in particular and society in general. Lt. Glahn is socially inept and impulsive. The two women? One is servile and unavailable; the other, more interested in the power of the chase than the capture. The resulting story is an intriguing study of human emotions, of motivation and of the honesty of self-revelation. An excellent book by an excellent author.
28 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Hamsun Skewers Noble Savage Myth
28 Feb 2002
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Pan is a short, terse, novel about a reclusive "wild" man, Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, gifted with sexual charisma who idealizes nature and himself but is blind to his arrested development, his cruelty, and his enslavement to his own compulsive actions, which, as the novel progresses, have tragic consequences. By showing the disparity between Glahn's perception of himself, which is rather romantic and lofty, with the "other" Glahn, the uncouth, abrasive one who clashes with other people, Knut Hamsun succeeds in writing an ambiguous, mysterious fable about the conflict between solitude and civilization, and how the "self" cannot be defined in its isolated state.
For an updated theme of the man being taken over by his inner beast, check out James Lasdun's modern masterpiece The Horned Man.
For an updated theme of the man being taken over by his inner beast, check out James Lasdun's modern masterpiece The Horned Man.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
A true masterpiece!
27 Dec 1998
Format:Paperback
Knut Hamsun has been called the father of modern fiction. First published in 1894, Pan is a perfect, beautifully written novel. The words, the construction, the atmosphere, like a long poem, where not a line nor punctuation could have been done differently. As thousands of readers before me and surely thousands that will come after me, I totally admire this wonderful little book, and I don`t know how many times I have read and re-read it, both in Norwegian and in English. This is a book not to be missed by anyone with a desire to read good literature.
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