Look Back on Happiness

Look Back on Happiness

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Look Back on Happiness, by Knut
Hamsun #5 in our series by Knut Hamsun
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Title: Look Back on Happiness
Author: Knut Hamsun
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8445] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 11, 2003]
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BACK ON HAPPINESS ***

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LOOK BACK ON HAPPINESS
KNUT HAMSUN
Translated from the Norwegian By PAULA WIKING

LOOK BACK ON HAPPINESS

I
I have gone to the forest.
Not because I am offended about anything, or very unhappy about
men's evil ways; but since the forest will not come to me, I must go to
it. That is all. I have not gone this time as a slave and a vagabond. I
have money enough and am overfed, stupefied with success and good
fortune, if you understand that. I have left the world as a sultan leaves
rich food and harems and flowers, and clothes himself in a hair shirt.
Really, I could make quite a song and dance about it. For I mean to
roam and think and make great irons red-hot. Nietzsche no doubt would
have spoken thus: The last word I spake unto men achieved their praise,
and they nodded. But it was my last word; and I went into the forest.
For then did I comprehend the truth, that my speech must needs be
dishonest or foolish.... But I said nothing of the kind; I simply went to
the forest.
* * * * *
You must not believe that nothing ever happens here. The snowflakes
drift down just as they do in the city, and the birds and beasts scurry
about from morning till night, and from night till morning. I could send
solemn stories from this place, but I do not. I have sought the forest for

solitude and for the sake of my great irons; for I have great irons which
lie within me and grow red-hot. So I deal with myself accordingly.
Suppose I were to meet a buck reindeer one day, then I might say to
myself:
"Great heavens, this is a buck reindeer, he's dangerous!"
But if then I should be too frightened, I might tell myself a comforting
lie and say it was a calf or some feathered beast.
You say nothing happens here?
One day I saw two Lapps meet. A boy and a girl. At first they behaved
as people do. "_Boris!_" they said to each other and smiled. But
immediately after, both fell at full length in the snow and were gone
from my sight. After a quarter of an hour had passed, I thought, "You'd
better see to them; they may be smothered in the snow." But then they
got up and went their separate ways.
In all my weatherbeaten days, I have never seen such a greeting as that.
* * * * *
Day and night I live in a deserted hut of peat into which I must crawl
on my hands and knees. Someone must have built it long ago and used
it, for lack of a better,--perhaps a man who was in hiding, a man who
concealed himself here for a few autumn days. There are two of us in
the hut, that is if you regard Madame as a person; otherwise there is
only one. Madame is a mouse I live with, to whom I have given this
honorary title. She eats everything I put aside for her in the nooks and
corners, and sometimes she sits watching me.
When I first came, there was stale straw in the hut, which Madame by
all means was allowed to keep; for my own bed I cut fresh pine twigs,
as is