gland,
the Olympian "this will never do." To begin with, it is not so much a
novel as a _novelle_--a form of art little cultivated in this country,
but which lends itself excellently to delicate artistic handling, and
the creation of that subtle influence which Hamsun's countrymen call
_stemning_, poorly rendered by the English "atmosphere." The epilogue
is disproportionately long; the portion written as by another hand
is all too recognizably in the style of the rest. And with all his
chivalrous sacrifice and violent end, Glahn is at best a quixotic
hero. Men, as men, would think him rather a fool, and women, as
women, might flush at the thought of a cavalier so embarrassingly
unrestrained. He is not to be idolized as a cinema star, or the
literary gymnastic hero of a perennial Earl's Court Exhibition set
to music on the stage. He could not be truthfully portrayed on a
flamboyant wrapper as at all seductively masculine. In a word, he is
neither a man's man nor a woman's man. But he is a human being, keenly
susceptible to influence which most of us have felt, in some degree.

Closely allied to _Pan_ is _Victoria_, likewise a story of conflict
between two lovers. The actual plot can only be described as
hackneyed. Girl and boy, the rich man's daughter and the poor man's
son, playmates in youth, then separated by the barriers of social
standing--few but the most hardened of "best-sellers" catering for
semi-detached suburbia would venture nowadays to handle such a theme.
Yet Hamsun dares, and so insistently unlike all else is the impress
of his personality that the mechanical structure of the story is
forgotten. It is interspersed with irrelevant fancies, visions and
imaginings, a chain of tied notes heard as an undertone through the
action on the surface. The effect is that of something straining
towards an impossible realization; a beating of wings in the void; a
striving for utterance of things beyond speech.

_Victoria_ is the swan-song of Hamsun's subjective period. Already, in
the three plays which appeared during the years immediately following
_Pan_, he faces the merciless law of change; the unrelenting "forward"
which means leaving loved things behind. Kareno, student of life,
begins his career in resolute opposition to the old men, the
established authorities who stand for compromise and resignation. For
twenty years he remains obstinately faithful to his creed, that the
old men must step aside or be thrust asi