Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
and what is human nature? the wild? the cultured?, June 30, 2002
Pan begins as a nature story - detailed, lush, knowledgeable descriptions of nature, of living a solitary existence, of feeding off the forest and sea. Phrases such as "there was a sweet sulphurous smell from the old leaves rotting in the woods" lull the reader into an expectation of a pastoral romance novel. This is anything but. It is, rather, an exploration of the relationship of the solitary Lt. Glahn with two women in particular and society in general. Lt. Glahn is socially inept and impulsive. The two women? One is servile and unavailable; the other, more interested in the power of the chase than the capture. The resulting story is an intriguing study of human emotions, of motivation and of the honesty of self-revelation. An excellent book by an excellent author.
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hamsun Skewers Noble Savage Myth, February 28, 2002
Pan is a short, terse, novel about a reclusive "wild" man, Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, gifted with sexual charisma who idealizes nature and himself but is blind to his arrested development, his cruelty, and his enslavement to his own compulsive actions, which, as the novel progresses, have tragic consequences. By showing the disparity between Glahn's perception of himself, which is rather romantic and lofty, with the "other" Glahn, the uncouth, abrasive one who clashes with other people, Knut Hamsun succeeds in writing an ambiguous, mysterious fable about the conflict between solitude and civilization, and how the "self" cannot be defined in its isolated state.
For an updated theme of the man being taken over by his inner beast, check out James Lasdun's modern masterpiece The Horned Man.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A true masterpiece!, December 26, 1998
Knut Hamsun has been called the father of modern fiction. First published in 1894, Pan is a perfect, beautifully written novel. The words, the construction, the atmosphere, like a long poem, where not a line nor punctuation could have been done differently. As thousands of readers before me and surely thousands that will come after me, I totally admire this wonderful little book, and I don`t know how many times I have read and re-read it, both in Norwegian and in English. This is a book not to be missed by anyone with a desire to read good literature.
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