Look Back on Happiness

Knut Hamsun was a major Norwegian author who received the Noble Prize for Literature for his novel Growth of the Soil in 1920. Hamsun's writing makes excellent use of symbolism. Hamsun saw man and nature united in a strong bond that could almost be considered mystical. Look Back on Happiness begins, "I have gone to the forest...... Not because I am offended about anything, or very unhappy about men's evil ways; but since the forest will not come to me, I must go to it. That is all. I have not gone this time as a slave and a vagabond. I have money enough and am overfed, stupefied with success and good fortune, if you understand that. I have left the world as a sultan leaves rich food and harems and flowers, and clothes himself in a hair shirt."