114-57.

—“The Whisper of the Blood: A Study of Knut Hamsun’s Early Novels,” PMLA 71 (1956): 563-94.

Næss, Harald. Knut Hamsun. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.

—“Knut Hamsun and America,” Scandinavian Studies 39 (1967): 305-28.

—“A Strange Meeting and Hamsun’s Mysteries,” Scandinavian Studies 36 (1964): 48-58.

—“Strindberg and Hamsun,” in Structures of Influence: A Comparative Approach to August Strindberg. University of North Carolina Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures, vol. 98, ed. Marilyn Johns Blackwell. Chapel Hill, 1981. Pp. 121-36.

—“Who Was Hamsun’s Hero?” in The Hero in Scandinavian Literature, ed. John M. Weinstock & Robert T. Rovinsky. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. Pp. 63-86.

Popperwell, Ronald G. “Interrelatedness in Hamsun’s Mysterier,” Scandinavian Studies 38 (1966): 295-301.

Riechel, Donald C. “Knut Hamsun’s ‘Imp of the Perverse’: Calculation and Contradiction in Sult and Mysterier,” Scandinavica 28 (1989): 29-53.

Wood, James. “Knut Hamsun’s Christian Perversions,” in The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief. New York: Random House, 1999. Pp. 75-88.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

This is the first complete translation of Knut Hamsun’s second novel, Mysteries. Arthur G. Chater’s rendition of 1927 was bowdlerized, presumably because the deleted pages (an episode in chapter 10) were considered too robust fare for English and American readers of the 1920s. Gerry Bothmer’s version of 1971 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is less a translation than a free adaptation of Hamsun’s original. The text is not only drastically reduced but also simplified, depriving Hamsun’s language of its quirky uniqueness and verve. In some ways Bothmer’s rendering represents a more egregious betrayal of Hamsun’s work than Robert Bly’s translation of Hunger.

I

IN THE MIDDLE of last summer a small Norwegian coastal town was the scene of some highly unusual events. A stranger appeared in town, a certain Nagel, a remarkable, eccentric charlatan who did a lot of curious things and then disappeared as suddenly as he had come. What’s more, the man was visited by a mysterious young lady, who came on heaven knows what business and left after only a few hours, afraid to stay any longer. But this is not the beginning....

The beginning is as follows: When the steamer docked around six o’clock in the evening, there appeared on deck two or three passengers, including a man wearing a loud yellow suit and a wide velvet cap. This was the evening of June 12, for flags were flying all over town in honor of Miss Kielland’s engagement, which had been announced that day. The porter from the Central Hotel immediately went on board, and the man in the yellow suit handed him his luggage; at the same time he surrendered his ticket to one of the ship’s officers. But then, instead of going ashore, he began pacing up and down the deck. He seemed to be greatly agitated. When the ship’s bell rang for the third time, he hadn’t even paid his bill to the steward.

As he was doing this he suddenly paused, noticing that the ship was already putting out.