INTERRELATEDNESS IN HAMSUN'S MYSTERIER1

has not been easy for critics to show great confidence in dealing with Mysterier. Many have assumed that there is a residual area of inexplicability in the work, which its very title suggests. This is no doubt so, but I suggest that attention has been directed somewhat too exclusively to the chief personage in the book, Johan Nilsen Nagel, and that something more is to be learnt by looking a little more closely at the other characters, at the nature of the society they constitute, and at the relevance of Mysterier to Knut Hamsun's other work.