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Title: Victoria by Oliver Stallybrass, Knut Hamsun ISBN: 0374507325 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: January, 1969 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $2.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5
Rating: 5
Summary: An elegantly twisted love story
Comment: This was the first of the Knut Hamsun novels that I read, and my favorite. It's a love story like no other, there's a mixture of emotions throughout the novel, which makes it a scarcely unwritten type of love story. The use of words in this novel is excellent. You feel like you really learn when you're done reading this book, which will not take long because it's hard to put down.
Rating: 5
Summary: Poetic Justice?
Comment: Would the the doomed lovers depicted in Victoria be as heart wrenching in a 21st century United States setting as they were in Norway in the 1800's? Would honor,social standing, duty and stubborness still doom Johannes to a life of yearning for the unattainable Victoria? Through the years,as he sublimated his unrequited passion into poetry, Johannes the lowly miller's son became a modest literary celebrity. Meanwhile Victoria's self worth plummeted, the result of promising to marry a wealthy suitor able to provide desperately needed funds necessary to save her father's deteriorating castle and land. Thus, loyalty and duty toward her father drove her to repress her strong attraction to Johannes. The tragedies which resulted perhaps triggered her subsequent illness. In an outpouring of love in the letter to Johannes which she insisted be withheld until her death, she declared the love which she had denied him in life. Was the ending poetic justice for two persons whose adherence to rules outweighed their willingness to "risk it all for love"? In this novel, originally published in 1898, Knut Hamsun has demonstrated that the conflicts and consequences of love and life are universal. I enjoyed every page of this timeless masterpiece.
Rating: 5
Summary: Nothing articulates the nature of longing like this novel
Comment: While one of Hamsun's other novels such as "Mysteries" or "Hunger" might be artistically superior to "Victoria", this novel is a favorite of Hamsun readers because of its lyricism and beauty. I cannot help but think of the passionate but doomed loves of my own life when reading this book, and so perhaps will you. This novel was a favorite of Henry Miller, who has a reputation as a sex-hound but was actually, like Hamsun, an old-fashioned romantic. "Victoria" does not succeed as a complete depiction of love, because the book describes a love that never came to fruition. Readers searching for an epic representation of mature, complex love might find "Victoria" to be too flowery and adolescent in its approach to romance...those looking for the final word on love will be disappointed. Instead, Hamsun's success lies in his capturing for all time the nature of passion and longing, the rawness of emotion and soaring of the heart that many of us, sadly, have forgotten. Anyone who has become numbed over the years by life's events may find that their long-slumbering heart awakens again upon reading this novel. Hailed as a classic in its day, "Victoria" may be even more valuable now in this era of cynicism and hearts that have forgotten the majesty of love.
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