Hamsun / Flaubert: Zwei Reden

Delivered in the early 1920s to a German audience, the two speeches commemorate two milestones: the Nobel Prize awarded to Knut Hamsun and the hundredth anniversary of Gustave Flaubert’s birth. Presented first on the stage of the Hessian State Theatre in Darmstadt, they capture a moment when Europe was still mapping its cultural borders after the Great War.

The first address places Hamsun among the continent’s literary giants—Tolstoy, Strindberg, Shaw—and argues that his work embodies a distinctly northern voice within a Western‑European tradition dominated by French narrative. It traces the flow of ideas from medieval Moorish influences in Spain to the rise of Russian novelists, highlighting the tensions between Western refinement and Eastern vigor, and questioning where German literature might fit into that spectrum.

The second speech turns to Flaubert, celebrating his mastery of form and his role as a touchstone for the Western canon. Both talks blend scholarly insight with a vivid, almost poetic panorama of European cultural history, offering listeners a compelling glimpse into the intellectual debates that shaped early‑twentieth‑century literary thought.