only refusing to acknowledge the power that is already hard
upon him.

Kareno is an _intellectual_ character. He is a philosopher, a man
whose perceptions and activity lie predominantly in the sphere of
thought, not of feeling. His attempt to carry the fire of youth beyond
the grave of youth ends in disaster; an unnecessary _debacle_ due to
his gratuitously attempting the impossible.

Hamsun's poet-personality, the spirit we have seen striving for
expression through the figures of Nagel, Glahn, Johannes, and the
rest, is a creature of _feeling_. And here the development proceeds on
altogether different lines. The emotion which fails to find adequate
outlet, even in such works as _Sult_, _Mysterier_, _Victoria_, and
_Pan_, might well seem more of a peril than the quixotic stubbornness
of Kareno's philosophy. Such a flood, in its tempestuous unrest, might
seem to threaten destruction, or at best the vain dispersal of its own
power into chaos. But by some rare guidance it is led, after the storm
of _Munken Vendt_, into channels of beneficent fertility.

In 1904, after an interval of short stories, letters of travel, and
poems, came the story entitled _Svoermere_. The word means "Moths." It
also stands for something else; something for which we English, as
a sensible people, have no word. Something pleasantly futile,
deliciously unprofitable--foolish lovers, hovering like moths about a
lamp.

But there is more than this that is untranslatable in the title. _As_
a title it suggests an attitude of gentleness, tenderness, sympathy,
toward whomsoever it describes. It is a new note in Hamsun; the
opening of a new _motif_.

The main thread of the story bears a certain similarity to that of
_Mysterier_, _Vicioria_, and _Pan_, being a love affair of mazy
windings, a tangled skein of loves-me-loves-me-not. But it is pure
comedy throughout. Rolandsen, the telegraph operator in love with
Elsie Mack, is no poet; he has not even any pretensions to education
or social standing. He is a cheerful, riotous "blade," who sports
with the girls of the village, gets drunk at times, and serenades the
parson's wife at night with his guitar. _Svoermere_ is the slightest
of little stories in itself, but full of delightful vagaries and the
most winning humour.

The story of _Benoni_, with its continuation _Rosa_, is in like vein;
a tenderly humorous portrayal of love below stairs, the principal
characters being chosen from the class who appea