Word: hartvigsen
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Soil. But Hamsun, pride of Norway, is a man to read thoroughly. This sequel to Benoni is named for Rosa because it is told in the first person by a young student that came to Sirilund just after her divorce was arranged, just before she married Benoni Hartvigsen. He is homely and humble, this student, and loves Rosa inevitably. Is she not the only beautiful thing in that village of drying fish and stuffy sitting rooms? But the centre of gravity is, as always, Trader Mack. The return of his tall, erotic daughter from Denmark, the brilliant suicide of Rosa...
...ventures went well. Mack's condescension cheered Benoni and won him people's respect again. Now they called him "Hartvigsen." Even Rosa spoke him kindly when he was invited to Mack's Christmas party...
Mack sold Hartvigsen an old seine and when a vast school of herring, pursued by whales, happened to get bottled in a creek, he made a rich "shot" (haul). Mack told him he should get married now and buy a mortgage on the Sirilund trading station. So Hartvigsen gave his silver for a mortgage. He also talked with Rosa as Mack suggested. They were agreed. He enlarged his house, bought doves and a piano, stretched his mighty arms. He scarcely noticed Rosa pucker her nose when he boasted of his money and compared himself to Mack...
Upon registering the mortgage, Hartvigsen learned a larger one was ahead of it. That crafty Mack! And Rosa kept putting off their wedding, until young Nikolai Arentsen, her former betrothed, came home with his law learning, opened an office and began to get cases thick and fast. Rosa conveyed to the big fisherman that she was sorry, but . . . Soon he was "Benoni" again to everyone. He gave Mack notice for his mortgage money but went on working with him. He had to. Mack knew business, Benoni nothing. By chance Benoni learned there were lead and silver along a stretch...
...there he was, "Hartvigsen" again, Mack's partner, his importance in the village so enormous there was no longer fun in boasting. Rosa's husband, fat, penniless, drunk, left for the South. Perhaps she would be his housekeeper; Mack had suggested it. She declined. Well, that was that. Perhaps he would find some one in the spring- and there the tale ends, exasperatingly inconclusive, like life...