Knut Hamsun’s Dreamers is a fresh, funny, and remarkably un-dated story of summer in a small community.  After being pent up all winter, the citizens of this Norwegian coastal town let loose under the freeing winds off the sea, the liberating smells of warm grass and blooming flowers, and the full-blown dreams borne of sun and heat and activity.  First published in 1904, the “every town”  described in Dreamers still exists today: in every culture, there are small enclaves of communities, whether it be village or suburb or office where life pulses on, bustling with petty jealousies, turbulent with shifting loyalties, alive with gossip and speculation, and fueled by dreams.

Hamsun brings us into the coastal village after it has slumbered through a cold winter and just as it is shaking itself awake, come to sudden life and lust under the command of the first spring breezes: “now it was spring again.  And the spring was a thing well-nigh intolerable to a full heart.  It put the whole creation on edge and blew its spice-laden breath into the most innocent of nostrils.”

A new curate is coming to town and there is speculation that he is rich; Marie van Loos is certain of her engagement to town telegraph operator and would-be Lothario Ove Rolandsen; Trader Mack is widening his benevolent grip over the village while training his son to take over and grooming his daughter, beautiful and refined, for better men than the local swains; and young Olga the sexton’s daughter wears a safety pin to hold her dress closed and her beauty contained.  But everything is not as it seems and as summer approaches and the nights disappear, leaving long days for lusting and longing, Hamsun reveals to us the dreams of the villagers.  Their efforts to fulfill their dreams are sometimes frustrated, occasionally fulfilled, and thoroughly engaging.

“Summer is the time for dreaming, and then you have to stop.  But some people go on dreaming all their lives, and cannot change.“  In the end, Hamsum rewards his inveterate dreamers, and so he encourages his readers to dream on through winter and through passing years.  Pursuit of happiness is not seasonal, or the sole property of youth or of rank or of nationality: it is universal and eternal, and Dreamers is proof of it.  My grandfather read Hamsun in Flemish translation sixty years ago, I read him now in an old translation into English, and Hamsun’s truths are as vibrant and real for me as they were for my grandfather.  Who knows in what translation my grandchildren will read him, but his stories will remain fresh and true because they are about what it is to be human, the flaws and longings and the beauty.