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p If after all that has been said we return to the play At the Gales of the Realm, we shall have no difficulty in seeing where Ivar Kareno’s "free thoughts" came from. They are a negative ideological product of the class struggle in modern capitalist society. 601 Naturally it must not be assumed that each individual representative of the social stratum of interest to us here experiences both these phases in his personaKdevelopment. No, I have given a general scheme, which is by no means always applicable to each individual case. Thus, for example, it by no means always happens that a person begins by sympathising with the working-class movement and ends by feeling contempt and hatred for it. Very often, probably most often, the present-day proletarian who works with his brain experiences neither positive nor negative emotions with regard to the proletariat, but assimilates with a calm indifference at an early age all the current bourgeois prejudices about it. In saying this I have in mind the Western proletarian who works with his brain. Occasionally, however, it happens that he is infected with the negative mood of the “disillusioned” straightaway. In this case he begins straightaway as Kasprowicz ends: with harsh diatribes about the “envious” working-class “mob”. One might think that in the character of Ivar Kareno Knut Hamsun is presenting us with one of these denouncers of the presentday proletariat. Nothing that Kareno says contains the slightest hint of any former sympathy on his part for the working-class movement. It is as if he has always hated it passionately all his conscious life. True, Kareno is a citizen of a country in which the modern class struggle has not yet reached any significant degree of intensity. But this makes no real difference. His country is not insured against the intellectual influence of the leading capitalist countries. The almost unbelievable absurdity of his ultimate goal “(the destruction of the workers”) can be explained precisely by the economic backwardness of his country. He thinks that machines will produce even without workers. This absurd Utopia could not have arisen in any of the countries which are well advanced along the path of capitalist development and machine production: it is far too obvious there that the success of technology is not restricting the role of the proletariat in the modern production process, but, on the contrary, is increasingly extending it. The same explanation applies to certain other absurdities in the play At the Gates of the Realm: they would not exist if this play, or rather a play like this one, appeared in the literature of one of the more developed capitalist countries. As proof I shall quote Professor Gylling’s attitude to Ivar Kareno.

p This liberal professor wishes to cure the young writer of his hatred for the workers at all costs. He himself shares the viewpoint of modern British philosophy “(the whole world lives by it and all thinkers believe in it,” he says to Kareno), the viewpoint of "Spencer and Mill, these reformers of our thought”. And it is in the spirit of Spencer and Mill that he wishes to influence Kareno, who, for his part, having embarked on a campaign against the working class, considers it necessary to shatter "modern 602 British philosophy”. Jerven, Kareno’s former comrade and supporter, who has changed his views as a result of Gylling’s intrigues, describes the latter as follows:

p “He is not particularly entertaining, no. He attacks Hegel, the policy of the ’right’ and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and champions the defence of the women’s question, universal suffrage and Stuart Mill. That’s all there is to him. A liberal in a grey hat and without any gross errors" (pp. 36-37).

p But could "a liberal in a grey hat and without any gross errors" be considered today as the mouthpiece and defender of the emancipatory aspirations of the proletariat? Of course not! And if not, why do Kareno and those who share his views carry on such a bitter theoretical struggle against this unfortunate liberal? Probably because they themselves do not yet know precisely which thinkers should be considered the theoreticians of the present-day proletariat. And this lack of knowledge is again possible only where the present-day working-class movement is still little developed. The mistake made by Kareno and those who share his views under the undoubted influence of Knut Hamsun is simply absurd. But this absurd mistake testifies to the economic backwardness of the country in which it was made.

p Further. The "liberal in a grey hat and without any gross errors" is so ardent in his defence of "modern British philosophy" and ... the modern proletariat, that he does not stop even at intrigue. He takes all measures to bar people who share Kareno’s way of thinking from literature and from the university. Jerven says outright that Professor Gylling would have prevented him from obtaining the title of doctor and a stipend if he had not renounced his views which were like those of Kareno. Kareno himself is urged paternally by Gylling to be more sensible. " Philosophy does not reject wit,” he says, "but what it does forbid categorically is irrelevant jokes. Stop writing your articles, Kareno. I advise you to wait with this and give your views time to mature and sort themselves out. Wisdom too comes with age" (pp. 19-20). Note that for the Professor the wisdom that comes with age consists not only in respecting "modern British philosophy”, but also in defending the interests of the working class. Kareno tells us that "our own Professor Gylling has devoted much talent and energy fighting for the workers’ question".  [602•*  And, as we can see, Gylling himself thinks that he has devoted no little talent and energy to this question. Quoting Kareno’s idea that high grain taxes are necessary to starve the worker, "who must perish”, he asks him: "haven’t you read anything that all of us have written on this question?" (p. 21). Further on 603 it transpires that Gylling “alone” has written "about six minor and major works" on the subject (p. 21). This is also extremely characteristic. The "liberal in a grey hat" is by no means alone in his defence of the working class. As well as by him these interests are defended by many others. But who are these others? Professor Gylling says briefly "all of us”. But from the course of the play it is clear that the name of this “us” is legion. It includes everything that is of any significance and influence in so-called society.

p This is why Kareno thinks that the work in which he suggests “destroying” the working class will meet with attacks and abuse. And this is why the bookseller was afraid to print the work when Kareno refused to change it in the way Professor Gylling wished. It was no accident that Gylling advised him "to revise this work a little".

p In a word, Knut Hamsun’s play seems to take us to the moon: such a strange form have our earthly relations assumed in it. Kareno thinks that no government, no parliament, no newspaper will allow anything that is hostile to the workers. This is a ridiculous assertion; but this ridiculous assertion becomes understandable if we believe that in Kareno’s country all members of “society” with the slightest influence defend passionately and firmly not only "modern British philosophy" but also the proletariat. And not only passionately and firmly. To this it must be added that the interests of "modern British philosophy" and the proletariat have been defended in this “society”, evidently, for a long time. I say this because the unanimous struggle for the interests of the workers “(modern British philosophy" can perhaps be left aside) is portrayed by Hamsun as something traditional in the society around Kareno, as something for the waging of which habit alone is enough and which has already acquired the force of prejudice in its influence on people’s minds. For this reason alone people who do not sympathise with this struggle, Kareno, Jerven and the few people who share their views, are represented as free thinkers and radical innovators. But where is this Arcadia? In Knut Hamsun’s imagination: there is not and cannot be a place for it in the modern civilised world. For it is a capitalist world, or one that is becoming capitalist, a world based on the exploitation of producers by the owners of the means of production, a world of more or less intense class struggle. In such a world the idyll, at which the play At the Gates of the Realm hints so unambiguously, is quite impossible. Exploiters have never been notable for their concern about the exploited. And one would need an extremely rich imagination combined with a total lack of interest in social life to imagine that exploiters, even if they did wear grey hats and were interested in "modern British philosophy”, could have such a tender concern for the 604 exploited that it made them forget the rules of morality and turned them into intriguers. There are very few people who possess such a rich imagination. On everyone else this aspect of Hamsun’s play is bound to produce a completely inartistic impression of artificiality, of not corresponding to the truth. Kareno’s character is also bound to produce the same inartistic impression. By making his hero tell us that one of his ancestors was a Finn, Hamsun seems to be trying to make his unruliness credible. But the point is not unruliness. Unruly people can be found anywhere, and for us to believe in Kareno’s unruliness we do not need to know that the blood "of a small, unruly people" flows in his veins. The point is what nature Ivar Kareno’s unruliness has assumed. And this nature again produces the impression of something artificial that does not correspond to the truth.

p We already know that Kareno is very selfless. If he forgets about his wife, to whom he is in fact very attached, this happens only because he is totally absorbed in his idea. In his field of vision there is no room for people and objects that bear no direct relation to the aim he has set himself. This is why he neglects his material affairs to such an extent that he has to receive the bailiff. And even when the harsh prose of life makes itself felt so insistently, even when he arrives at a clear awareness of the extreme difficulty of his position, he does not show the slightest tendency to compromise. In vain does the liberal in a grey hat, Professor Gylling, sing him the songs of a siren in love (thanks to Hamsun’s whim) with the proletariat. Kareno remains steadfast. Only when he discovers his wife’s infidelity and when he feels the desire to win back her love, does he attempt to behave differently. "I can change a few things in my book,” he says. "I have changed my mind. The final chapter, on liberalism, upset Professor Gylling. Very well, I will delete it, it is not so essential anyway. I shall also delete some of the outspoken passages. Even without them there will be a big book. (Roughly.) I’ll revise the book" (pp. 113-14). But he soon realises that his attempt is quite hopeless. "I have changed my mind again,” he shouts, standing by the door that leads into his wife’s now empty room. "Elina, I couldn’t do it. You can say what you will. I won’t revise it. Hear? I can’t do it" (p. 118). This is indeed rare and most praiseworthy devotion to an idea. But what sort of idea? We already know: the idea of destroying the working class, the idea of misanthropy. Kareno reveals a remarkably good quality in striving for a remarkably bad and also quite absurd aim. And it is this contradiction that impairs the artistic merit of the play more than anything else. Ruskin remarks profoundly: "A maiden may sing of her lost love, but a miser cannot sing of his lost money.” Hamsun seems to be trying to prove that this is not so. He has attempted to show in an idealised light that which is even 605 less capable of being idealised than the emotion of the miser who has lost his money. It is not surprising that instead of a drama he has produced a special kind of tearful comedy that impresses one as a colossal literary mistake.

I would not say that a character like Kareno is quite inconceivable. I can easily imagine that in certain circumstances Nietzsche would have behaved exactly like Ivar Kareno. But Nietzsche was an exception and moreover, it should be remembered, a pathological exception. Psychically ill people do not count here, and as for healthy ones they reveal great selflessness only under the influence of great ideas. The idea of “destroying” the proletariat cannot inspire selflessness for the simple reason that it is •engendered by a feeling that is the direct opposite of selflessness: by the egoism of the exploiters, taken to an absurd extreme. And the misanthrope has no need of selflessness. Egoism is all one needs to do harm to people. Przybyszewski appears to have understood this well. And one is bound to admit that the character of Erik Falk, for example, contains far more artistic truth than that of Ivar Kareno. Actually these words do not express my idea accurately. Kareno’s character lacks artistic truth entirely. Therefore it must be said that Przybyszewski realised that egoism was all that misanthropes need and this is why his Erik Falk is as true in the artistic sense as Ivar Kareno is false in the same sense. As far as I know our critics have not paid any attention to this fact. Why not? Or is it also a sign of the times?