Гамсун | Духовная жизнь Америки, 6 (Переводы в изданиях А.Ф.Маркса)

In this section of his essay "The Spiritual Life of America," Norwegian writer and future Nobel Prize laureate in literature Knut Hamsun continues his discussion of the influences on American spiritual life, specifically examining the relationship between the church, morality, and etiquette. His judgments become increasingly peremptory: "for them, freedom is arbitrariness, and participation is a form devoid of any content." Hamsun makes no attempt to hide his hostility toward America's black population, using expressions that would immediately land one in jail in contemporary Europe or America. He also addresses this, noting that if a horse winked at a woman on the street, she, in turn, would only wink at a policeman, and the horse would be immediately arrested. As the saying goes, you're telling me about political correctness now!... Knut Hamsun spent a total of almost four years in America: from 1882 to 1884 and from 1886 to 1888—not as a tourist, but as an emigrant. He labored on farms, worked as a pig farmer and clerk, as a salesman and journalist, as a streetcar conductor in Chicago, and as a secretary to the Norwegian emigrant, poet, and priest Christopher Janson in Minneapolis. Initially enthusiastic about the freedom and democracy of American life, Hamsun soon became convinced from personal experience that the proclaimed ideas and principles were, in fact, quite distant from the realities of American life. The bitterness of his disillusionment found expression in his book "Fra det moderne Amerikas Aandsliv" ("From the Modern Spiritual Life of America"), published in 1889. Unfortunately, the five-volume collected works of the writer, published by A. F. Marx (1910), does not list a translator of this work. Sablin's edition of Hamsun's works, also published in 1910 (!), features a different translation, by Maria Kovalevskaya (Hamsun, K. The Spiritual Life of Modern America / Complete Works. 3rd ed., Vol. 12. Moscow: V. M. Sablin Publishing House, 1910). We'll leave it to readers/listeners to judge what exactly has changed and what has remained unchanged in America's cultural and spiritual life over the past 130 years. This publication commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States on July 4, 1776—an event that radically changed the world. The design features music from Jean Sibelius's Third Symphony, arranged by Henri Loriod, which served as the theme for the French-Canadian television series "Bordertown" (1989). Knut Hamsun's entire book "Spiritual Life in America" ​​in one playlist:    • Кнут Гамсун | Духовная жизнь Америки   The "Translations in A.F. Marx's Editions" series:    • Переводы в изданиях А. Ф. Маркса