FROM ‘HUNGER’

Although I, too, have been moved by the work of Knut Hamsun, errors of fact and judgment and the critically narrow scope of Judith Freeman’s paean to “Hunger” (Aug. 11) move me to a few words of qualification.

First, but of lesser importance, the errors of fact: Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize not for “Hunger” but for “Growth of the Soil.” “Hunger” is, in fact, something of an anomaly in Hamsun’s opus: The majority of his fiction has much more in common with the politically dubious romantic nature-worship of the later novel.

Second, Freeman incorrectly affirms that Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov narrates “Crime and Punishment” in a sentence that bemoans the rarity of such narrators of “genius” in “modern fiction.” (Attentive readers will recognize the reference from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s introduction to “Hunger”; Singer, however, makes no claims about the narrator of “Crime and Punishment.”)

Of greater concern is Freeman’s ill-informed tolerance of Hamsun’s sympathy for Nazi ideology. She writes that “he disgraced himself by appearing to support Hitler,” and that even Singer would “forgive him his stupidity and naivete . . . because his writing is so resolutely nonpolitical.” This impression is frankly inconsistent with a historical understanding of the themes that drive all of Hamsun’s later fiction and with notorious facts as well.

Singer himself notes that Hamsun and Hitler were photographed together; Hamsun’s membership in Quisling’s party during the war and his punishment after are well known, as are the frequent derogatory remarks about Jews in many of his novels and essays.

As for the prominent themes in his fiction, including “Hunger,” most conspicuous among them are a glorification of the simple peasant’s life in submission to nature and a mistrust and repudiation of the sophistication of modern urban life--in short, the romance of Blut und Boden which, in Nazi hands, affirms man’s inherited and inalienable share of nature as rooted in race ( Blut : blood) and nation ( Boden : soil).

Fondness for Henry Miller led me to Knut Hamsun; from both I have learned a great deal about what is powerful and passionate in the human spirit. But enthusiasm can be, and historically has been, dangerous. In these times of resurgent nationalistic enthusiasms, it is important to remember this.

PAUL S. MIKLOWITZ, SAN LUIS OBISPO. Editor’s note: Actually, the Nobel Prize for Literature is normally given for an author’s entire body of work.