![]() ![]() At the same time, Hunger’s inventory of biblical images is reduced to an arbitrary assemblage of props and splinters it disintegrates into both linguistic and figurative fragments of belief of which both the author, and thus, the nameless ‘hunger artist’, make excessive use. The term ‘cadence’ refers to two aspects whose interplay determines the special poetological quality of the Hunger-book: On the one hand, it designates an unusual stylistic stance that is continually recurring to the rhetorical gestures as well as to the images and personages of the Bible. Rather, the biblical cadence reveals itself as crucial to the specific poetic composition of the entire text. This echo of the stylistic gesture of the Book of Books is, however, not a one-time affair. The opening sentence of Knut Hamsun’s 1890 novel Hunger ( Sult, 1890) captures our attention from the very start by unmistakably echoing the recurring opening words of the Gospels: “It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania” (HG, 3). Echoing the Book of Books: Towards an Aesthetics of Disintegration ![]()
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