Here we have actions and reactions as fantastic as in Sult, though the hero has here no such excuse as in the former case.  The “mysteries,” or mystifications, of Nagel, a stranger who comes, for no particular reason apparent, to stay in a little Norwegian town, arise entirely out of Nagel’s own personality.

Mysterier is one of the most exasperating books that a publisher’s reader, or a conscientious reviewer, could be given to deal with.  An analysis of the principal character is a most baffling task.  One is tempted to call him mad, and have done with it.  But, as a matter of fact, he is uncompromisingly, unrestrainedly human; he goes about constantly saying and doing things that we, ordinary and respectable people, are trained and accustomed to refrain from saying or doing at all.  He has the self-consciousness of a sensitive child; he is for ever thinking of what people think of him, and trying to create an impression.  Then, with a paradoxical sincerity, he confesses that the motive of this or that action was simply to create an impression, and thereby destroys the impression.  Sometimes he caps this by wilfully letting it appear that the double move was carefully designed to produce the reverse impression of the first—­until the person concerned is utterly bewildered, and the reader likewise.

Mysterier appeared in 1893.  In the following year Hamsun astonished his critics with two books, Ny Jord (New Ground) and Redaktoer Lynge, both equally unlike his previous work.  With these he passes at a bound from one-man stories, portrait studies of eccentric characters in a remote or restricted environment, to group subjects, chosen from centres of life and culture in Christiania. Redaktoer Lynge—­redaktoer, of course, means “editor”—­deals largely with political manoeuvres and intrigues, the bitter controversial politics of Norway prior to the dissolution of the Union with Sweden. Ny Jord gives an unflattering picture of the academic, literary, and artistic youth of the capital, idlers for the most part, arrogant, unscrupulous, self-important, and full of disdain for the mere citizens and merchants whose simple honesty and kindliness are laughed at or exploited by the newly dominant representatives of culture.

Both these books are technically superior to the first two, inasmuch as they show mastery of a more difficult form.  But their appeal is not so great; there is lacking a something that might be inspiration, personal sympathy—­some indefinable essential that the author himself has taught us to expect.  They are less hamsunsk than most of Hamsun’s work.  Hamsun is at his best among the scenes and characters he loves; tenderness and sympathy make up so great a part of his charm that he is hardly recognizable in surroundings or society uncongenial to himself.

It would almost seem as if he realized something of this.  For in his next work he turns from the capital to the Nordland coast, reverting also, in some degree, to the subjective, keenly sensitive manner of Sult, though now with more restraint and concentration.