Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
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H
Habibi, Emile (Imil Habibi) (1921–1996)
novelist, short-story writer, political essayist
Acclaimed experimental novelist Habibi writes
about Palestinians who, like him, live within Israel
after its 1948 statehood and are marginalized and
displaced in the land of their birth. The Secret Life
of Sa’eed, the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist (1974; trans-
lated by Salma K. Jayyusi and Trevor LeGassick,
1982), about a Palestinian who becomes an
overzealous informant for the Israeli government,
is considered his greatest novel, engaging Habibi’s
typical black humor and cynical wit. The novel’s
hapless antihero, Sa’eed, faces bewildering choices
between Zionist exploitation and Arab stupidities
in an Arabic text studded with puns and witty
wordplay. The protagonist’s name means “happy;”
of course, he is profoundly not happy. Among
Habibi’s novels are Sudasiyat al-ayyam al-sitta
(Sextet on the Six Days, 1968), about the 1967 Six
Day War; Luka’ ibn Luka’ (1980; the title is a non-
sensical name combined with its patronymic,
which is difficult to translate); and Ikhtayyi (Such a
Pity, 1986), which remembers Palestinian commu-
nity life before it came into conflict with Israel in
1948.
Habibi helped found the Israeli Communist
Party and was elected to three Knesset terms on its
platform. His decision to accept the 1992 Israeli
Prize for Literature from the Israeli prime minis-
ter surprised some among both Arabs and Israeli
Jews because his principled opposition to Israel’s
policies seemed to preclude his acceptance of such
an award. A humanist with a broad vision that
transcended the sad specifics of his condition as a
Palestinian living in Israel, Habibi donated the
award money to a Palestinian clinic.
Another Work by Emile Habibi
The Secret Life of Sa’eed, the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist, a
Palestinian Who Became a Citizen of Israel. Trans-
lated by Salma K. Jayyusi and Trevor LeGassick.
Brooklyn N.Y.: Interlink Publishing Group, 1982.
A Work about Emile Habibi
Boullata, Issa J., and Roger Allen. The Arabic Novel
Since 1950: Critical Essays, Interviews, and Bibliog-
raphy. Cambridge, Mass.: Dar Mahjar Publica-
tions, 1992.
Hagiwara Sakutar¯o (1886–1942) poet
Hagiwara Sakutar¯o was born in Maebashi,
Gumma Prefecture, in Japan. While a student
at Maebashi Middle School, he began to show
interest in poetry and in 1908 entered the German
literature course at the Sixth High School; how-
ever, due to illness, he withdrew. In addition to ac-
ademics, Hagiwara studied the mandolin and gui-
tar, hoping at one time that he might become a
professional musician.
Hagiwara’s literary career did not take root until
1913, when he published tanka in the magazine
Zamboa. He experimented with colloquial lan-
guage, onomatopoeia, and free verse and, in 1917,
published his first collection, Howling at the Moon,
which is regarded as the model for modern lyric
poetry. In 1922, he published The Blue Cat, a col-
lection of poems that was more reflective and less
imagistic than Howling. His last collection, The Ice-
land (1934), received mixed reviews. In writing the
Iceland poems, Hagiwara abandoned the modern,
colloquial style of his earlier collections and wrote
in classical Japanese. After The Iceland, he retired
from writing poetry, turning to poetic criticism
and studies on Japanese culture.
Hagiwara is known as the father of modern
Japanese poetry. He established a new style of po-
etry that incorporated free verse, colloquial lan-
guage, and onomatopoeia. His poems are often
dark, containing elements of morbid fantasy and
FIN-DE-SIÈCLE decadence. He is often contrasted to
poet TAKAMURA Kotar¯o.
Other Works by Hagiwara Sakutar¯o
Face at the Bottom of the World and Other Poems.
Translated by Graeme Wilson. Paintings by York
Wilson. Rutland, Vt.: C. E. Tuttle Co., 1969.
Principles of Poetry. Translated by Chester C.I. Wang
and Isamu P. Fukuchi. Ithaca, N.Y.: East Asia Pro-
gram, Cornell University, 1998.
Rats’ Nests: The Poetry of Hagiwara Sakutar¯o. Stan-
wood, Wash.: UNESCO Publishing, 1999.
Ten Japanese Poets. Translated by Hiroaki Sato.
Hanover, N.H.: Granite Publications, 1973.
Works about Hagiwara Sakutar¯o
Gaffke, Carol. Poetry Criticism: Vol. 18. Detroit: Gale
Research, 1997.
Keene, Donald. Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature
of the Modern Era: Poetry, Drama, Criticism. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Halter, Erika
See BURKART, ERIKA.
Hamsun, Knut (pseudonym of Knut
Pederson)
(1859–1952)
novelist, poet,
playwright
Knut Hamsun was born in Lom, Norway, to
Peder Petersen, a tailor, and Tora Petersen. The
family moved to Hamaroy, a small town 100 miles
north of the Arctic Circle, where they took charge
of the farm of Hans Olsen, Peder’s brother-
in-law, who was afflicted with a paralytic
illness. Olsen accused the Petersens of owing him
money, and as a child, Hamsun was forced to
work for his uncle, keeping accounts in the post
office, chopping wood, and running the small li-
brary in the village. Hamsun read the few books
available at the library but had no formal school-
ing. His father taught him to read and write, and
Hamsun occasionally attended a traveling school
for a few weeks a year. Hamsun ran away to Lom
in 1873 but returned the following year, working
small jobs around the village. Hamsun’s works
reflect the bitterness and hardships of his
childhood.
Somehow, Hamsun managed to produce his
first novel and have it published in 1877 when he
was 18. The same year, Hamsun was hired as a
schoolteacher in the small town of Vesteralen. The
following year, he published his second novel to no
great acclaim. Driven by literary aspirations, he
moved to Oslo, where he lived in poverty and
worked as a highway construction worker. Destitu-
tion forced Hamsun to move to the United States,
where he resided between 1882 and 1888, working
as a farmhand in North Dakota and as a streetcar
attendant in Chicago. These experiences greatly
contributed to the formation of Hamsun’s literary
style.
Hamsun’s experiences in the United States in-
spired him to compose a satirical piece, Fra det
Moderne Amerikas Aandsliv (Cultural Life in Mod-
ern America, 1889), which described numerous re-
ligions and religious outlooks that Hamsun
Hamsun, Knut 189
discovered during his stay. His first breakthrough
work, however, appeared in 1890: Sult (Hunger),
which depicts the life of a starving writer in Oslo,
became a literary sensation. This sudden success
resulted in Hamsun giving a series of lectures in
which he criticized such literary figures as Henrik
IBSEN and Leo TOLSTOY for their sentimentality. His
next novel, Mysterier (Mysteries) followed in 1892.
Pan (1894) was written in Paris, where Hamsun
lived from 1893 to 1895.
In 1911, Hamsun relocated to a small farm in
Norway. For much of the rest of his life, he di-
vided his time between writing and farming and
virtually isolated himself from the outside world.
Markens Grøde (The Growth of the Soil, 1917) tells
a story of Isak, a simple man who commits his life
to the natural rhythms of rural life and combines
the mythological and historical aspects of the
Norwegian culture. The novel was well received,
not only in Norway but also in Germany, where
Hamsun’s work developed a huge following. In
1920, Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize in
literature.
During World War I, Hamsun, unlike most
Norwegians, supported the German cause, and be-
fore and during World War II, he was a vocal sup-
porter of the Nazi party. During the Nazi
occupation of Norway, Hamsun wrote a series of
pro-Nazi articles and met with Adolf Hitler and
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, on
whom Hamsun bestowed his Nobel Prize medal
as a sign of admiration.
After World War II, Hamsun was arrested by the
Norwegian government for his collaboration with
the Nazi regime. After spending some time in a
psychiatric hospital, he was placed on trial in 1947.
He did not rescind his opinions and showed sup-
port for Hitler’s military policies throughout the
trial. Hamsun was heavily fined by the court and
censured by the public; sales of his work fell after
the trial. Yet, when Hamsun attempted to explain
his political views in På Gjengrodde Stier (On
Overgrown Paths, 1949), the work sold out in Nor-
way almost instantly.
Critical Analysis
Despite the controversy about Knut Hamsun’s po-
litical affiliations, his work has been rediscovered
in recent years. Most critics concur that his best
work was written before the turn of the century,
though The Growth of the Soil has its advocates.
Hunger retains its capacity to shock with its intense
depiction of the psychological degeneration of the
young writer, whose thoughts become more and
more incomprehensible as time passes. This pas-
sage is an example of Hamsun’s close focus:
If one only had something to eat, just a little,
on such a clear day! The mood of the gay
morning overwhelmed me, I became unusu-
ally serene, and started to hum for pure joy
and for no particular reason. In front of a
butcher’s shop there was a woman with a bas-
ket on her arm, debating about some sausage
for dinner; as I went past, she looked up at me.
She had only a single tooth in the lower jaw.
In the nervous and excitable state I was on, her
face made an instant and revolting impression
on me—the long yellow tooth looked like a
finger sticking out of her jaw, and as she
turned toward me, her eyes were full of
sausage. I lost my appetite instantly, and felt
nauseated.
Hamsun’s narrative innovations in this novel, such
as the way he shifts between first and third person,
have been much imitated, and his anxious, alienated
artist prefigures many 20th-century literary heroes.
By the time he wrote Pan (1894), Hamsun had
become an admirer of Friedrich NIETZSCHE’s work,
especially Nietzsche’s notions about the superman.
Written in the form of a hunter’s diary, it tells the
story of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn’s doomed
obsession with a mysterious woman. Its stress on
the need to escape from urban civilization into the
wilderness of nature strongly demonstrates the in-
fluence of Nietzche in its emphasis on the individual.
Undeniably, Hamsun served an important role
in presenting the Norwegian culture and struggles
190 Hamsun, Knut
to the world in his writings. The focus of Hamsun’s
work always rested on the relationship between
individuals and their respective environments. In
terms of style, Hamsun’s work was simply excep-
tional and groundbreaking in its irreverence for
the established epistemology of the novel, for the
all too readily accepted conventions of fiction.
Isaac Bashevis SINGER has observed that Hamsun
“is the father of the modern school of literature in
his every aspect—his subjectiveness, his fragmen-
tariness, his use of flashbacks, his lyricism. The
whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth
century stems from Hamsun.”
Other Works by Knut Hamsun
Dreamers. Translated by Tom Geddes. New York: New
Directions, 1996.
Mysteries. Translated by Sverre Lyngstadt. New York:
Penguin, 2001.
Victoria. Translated by Oliver Stallybrass. New York:
Green Integer, 2001.
Works about Knut Hamsun
Ferguson, Robert. Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun.
New York: Noonday Press, 1988.
Naess, Harold. Knut Hamsun. Boston: Twayne, 1984.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis. Introduction to Knut Hamsun,
Hunger. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1967.
Han Yongun (Han Yu-chon; Manhae)
(1879–1944) poet
Han Yongun was born in Hongsong, Chungchong
province, Korea, on August 29. A voracious reader,
he taught himself the Chinese classics as a youth.
Like many young people of the period, he entered
into an arranged marriage at age 13. Later, he en-
tered Komajawa College, where he studied Bud-
dhist philosophy.
In 1904, he became a monk at Paektamsa tem-
ple. He hoped to rebuild Buddhism radically in
Korea with modern reforms such as a choice for
celibacy, establishing a solid economic base, and
taking Buddhism to the masses. As president of the
Buddhist Studies Association in 1913 and in 1918,
he established the Buddhist monthly, Mind. His
poem of the same name is considered by some to
be the first modern poem, written in free verse,
and highly metaphysical.
Han Yongun was an active leader of the 1919
Korean Independence Movement, which culmi-
nated in a demonstration against Japanese colonial
rule on March 1, 1919. His works were frequently
patriotic, invoking Buddhist themes to reiterate
Korean culture and to inspire resistance against
Japanese rule. Examples of such poems are “Sub-
mission” and the title poem from his most famous
work, a collection of 88 poems titled The Silence of
Love (1926). In these free-verse Buddhist poems
addressing a nim, or love, the object of love is am-
biguous. Critics believe that the nim is alternately a
woman (“And You”), the Korean people (“To My
Readers”), or a Buddhist object of nature (“Pref-
ace”). Although the nim itself may remain name-
less, themes of patriotism, devotion, and a
pantheistic love are evident. One of the most fa-
mous poems from the collection, “Ferryboat and
Traveler,” examines the relationship between join-
ing and parting in love.
Han Yongun wrote in the Chinese style, in sijo,
or the traditional Korean verse, and in free verse.
The poems from The Silence of Love are known for
their innovative free verse. Another literary inno-
vation was using poetry as a vehicle for social and
political change, a marked departure from the lyri-
cal and apolitical Korean literary tradition.
Han Yongun died of neuralgia on June 29 at age
65, just one year before Korea gained liberation
from Japanese rule.
Another Work by Han Yongun
Love’s Silence and Other Poems. New York: Ronsdale
Press, 1999.
A Work about Han Yongun
Yu, Beongcheon. Han Yong-un and Yi Kwang-su: Two
Pioneers of Modern Korean Literature. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1992.
Han Yongun 191
Handke, Peter (1942– ) playwright,
novelist, critic
Peter Handke was born in Altenmarkt, Austria, to
Maria Handke, an impoverished farmer, and was
raised by his stepfather, Bruno Handke, a soldier in
the German army and later a carpenter. Handke at-
tended a standard Austrian elementary school. Be-
tween 1954 and 1959, he lived and studied at a
Roman Catholic seminary, intending to become a
priest. The admission to the seminary of a poor
country boy, gained through a rigid examination,
was a source of pride for Handke and his parents.
Handke, however, was extremely unhappy at the
seminary and later expounded on the state-spon-
sored lies taught by the priests.
Between 1961 and 1965, Handke studied law at
the Karl-Franzens University in Graz. When
Handke’s first novel was accepted for publication
by a prestigious publishing company, he immedi-
ately quit the law, leaving the school before the
final exam. Handke began his writing career as a
literary critic and writer for the Austrian radio. In
1966, shortly after the publication of his first major
work, Die Hornissen (The Hornets), the 23-year-old
Handke publicly criticized contemporary German
literature and
GRUPPE
47
, the group of leading Ger-
man writers, at a literary seminar held at Princeton
University. He claimed that Group 47 established
a codified set of aesthetics that rigidly defined what
literature should be. Handke has remained a con-
troversial figure in literature for much of his career.
In 1969, he started Verlag der Autoren, a publish-
ing house that supported radical writers and film-
makers.
Critical Analysis
Handke established himself as a renovator of the
German theater with the production of Pub-
likumsbeschimpfung (1966; translated as Offending
the Audience, 1971). The play completely departs
from traditional theatrical conventions, such as
plot, theme, and character. The four actors liter-
ally set about offending the audience by lecturing
the spectators about their expectations, naïveté,
and conventional role. The play caused a sensation,
but many critics saw Handke’s gesture as preten-
tious and concluded that his drama would never
gain a wide appeal in Germany.
The Hornets has not been translated into Eng-
lish. Instead of using the traditional units of de-
marcations, the novel is structured into 67
free-standing, episodic parts that seemingly have
no connection, narrative or otherwise, among
them. At the center of the convoluted narrative is
the blind narrator, Gregor Benedikt, who attempts
to reconstruct the events leading to his blindness.
Instead of using visual images, Handke relies on
imitation of words and sounds to recreate Gregor’s
environment. While deconstructing the traditional
conventions of the novel, The Hornets comments
on the structure of the traditional novel. Although
the novel brought critical recognition to Handke, it
baffled and surprised most of its readers.
Der Hausierer (The Peddler, 1967) further chal-
lenges the traditional methodology of the novel.
The novel is divided into chapters, which are fur-
ther subdivided into theoretical and narrative sec-
tions. The theoretical sections present the theory
behind the detective novel. The narrative parts elu-
sively delineate a fragmented murder mystery but
do not present a motivation for the murder, nor is
the crime solved in the end. Indeed, the only clues
to reading the narrative are provided in the theo-
retical parts of the work. The Peddler was called
unreadable by many critics and never achieved
wide success with the general reading public.
A prolific writer, Peter Handke has produced
more than 20 plays, several screenplays, and several
works of fiction. He has also directed and acted in
films. He currently lives in Chaville, France, after
having lived in Berlin, Paris, and the United States,
as well as in Austria. He has received numerous
prizes for his writing, including the Corinthian
Culture Prize in 1983, the Franz Kafka Prize in
1979, and the Great Austrian State Prize in 1988.
By the 1980s, Handke had achieved recognition
as a leading contemporary author in Austria. Many
of his plays were translated into French and Eng-
lish. In the mid–1990s, however, his name once
again became controversial when he wrote a series
192 Handke, Peter
of articles supporting Serbia in the Balkan Wars
and condemning the NATO bombings. Despite the
controversial political stance, Handke’s work is still
praised and read throughout the world. Peter
Handke has established himself as one of the lead-
ing figures of POSTMODERNISM.
Other Works by Peter Handke
On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House. Translated
by Krishna Winston. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 2000.
Once Again for Thucydides. Translated by Tess Lewis.
New York: New Directions, 1998.
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story. Translated by
Ralph Manheim. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1975.
Works about Peter Handke
Demeritt, Linda C. New Subjectivity and Prose Forms
of Alienation: Peter Handke and Botho Strauss.
New York: Peter Lang, 1987.
Firda, Richard. Peter Handke. Boston: Twayne, 1993.
Konzett, Matthias. The Rhetoric of National Dissent:
In Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and Elfriede
Jelinek. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2000.
Harris, Wilson (Kona Woruk) (1921– )
novelist, critic, poet
Wilson Theodore Harris was born to a middle-
class family in New Amsterdam, a colony of British
Guiana that is now the independent country of
Guyana. He studied English literary classics and
classical literature while attending Queen’s Col-
lege in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, from
1934 to 1939. Harris also studied and practiced
land surveying, which informed his fiction; the
surveyor is one of Harris’s recurring fictional char-
acters. He also uses the land as an innovative fic-
tional tool.
While working as a land surveyor, Harris began
to publish poems, stories, critical essays, and re-
views in the literary journal Kyk-over-al. He pub-
lished two small books of poems, Fetish (1951) and
Eternity to Season (1954), before leaving Guyana
for Britain in 1959 to become a full-time writer.
His first novel, Palace of the Peacock (1969), one of
his best known, is an exploration of intercultural
and interracial relationships, as well as of history
and mythology in Guyana.
Harris continues to explore these intercultural,
interracial, and transhistorical themes in Guyana
in subsequent novels: The Far Journey of Oudin
(1961), The Whole Armour (1962), The Secret Lad-
der (1963), and Heartland (1964). Commenting on
Harris’s poetry and novels in New World Guyana
Independence Issue, Louis James asserts, “For Har-
ris, time and space are exploded, and as in atomic
physics, matter is transformed into energy and vice
versa, a person may turn into a place, a place into
an aspiration.”
Harris’s own comments in Explorations (1981),
a collection of critical writings, explain what mo-
tivates the symbols, mythological allusions, non-
linearity, imagistic juxtaposition, and multiple
speakers that reappear in his novels. He states that,
“Within the art of fiction we are attempting to ex-
plore . . . it is a ‘vacancy’ in nature within which
agents appear who are translated one by the other
and who ...reappear through each other, inhabit
each other, reflect a burden of necessity, push each
other to plunge into the unknown, into the trans-
latable, transmutable legacies of history.” In other
words, Harris’s literary devices require the reader
to participate actively with him in exploring cul-
ture and history.
In his next novels, Harris focuses on memory
and the mind, still using the setting of Guyana, and
explores the land’s symbolic potential. Some of
these novels include The Eye of the Scarecrow
(1965) and The Waiting Room (1967), both of
which were written in the form of a diary or jour-
nal. Tumatumari (1968) and Ascent to Omai
(1970) explore the female and male consciousness,
respectively.
In Harris’s later novels, he begins to use differ-
ent settings, such as London, Mexico, Edinburgh,
and India. Themes of resurrection, metaphors of
painting, and characters reoccur in these novels:
Companions of the Day and Night (1975), Da Silva
Harris, Wilson 193
da Silva’s Cultivated Wilderness (1977), Genesis of
the Clowns (1977), The Tree of the Sun (1978), and
The Angel at the Gate (1982). Da Silva da Silva’s
Cultivated Wilderness exemplifies the autobio-
graphical traces found in his other works, such as
the Genesis of Clowns; like Harris, Da Silva is a
South American artist of mixed racial background
who lives in London.
While writing, Harris worked as a lecturer and
writer-in-residence at different universities, in-
cluding the University of the West Indies, the Uni-
versity of Texas at Austin and Yale University in the
United States, and New Castle University in Aus-
tralia. His critical works include Fossil and Psyche
(1974), The Womb of Space: The Cross-Cultural
Imagination (1983), and The Radical Imagination
(1992). In Wilson Harris and the Caribbean Novel
(1975), Michael Gilkes asserts, “The work of Wil-
son Harris deserves serious attention for this rea-
son above all: it suggests the possibility of a
response to the West Indian cultural and historical
reality which is neither a revolt against, nor a pas-
sive acceptance of, a divisive situation.”
Other Works by Wilson Harris
Bundy, A. J. M., ed. Selected Essays of Wilson Harris:
The Unfinished Genesis of the Imagination. New
York: Routledge, 1999.
Resurrection at Sorrow Hill. London: Faber & Faber,
1993.
The Four Banks of the River of Space. Boston: Faber,
1990.
Works about Wilson Harris
Cribb, Timothy J. “Toward the Reading of Wilson
Harris.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 17, no. 2
(Summer 1997): 59–62.
Johnson, Kerry L. “Translations of Gender, Pain, and
Space: Wilson Harris’s The Carnival Trilogy, Med-
delanden fran Strindbergssallskapet” 44, no. 1
(Spring 1998): 123–43.
Kutzinski, Vera M. “New Personalities: Race, Sexual-
ity, and Gender in Wilson Harris’s Recent Fiction.”
Review of Contemporary Fiction 17, no. 2 (Summer
1997): 72–76.
Ha
v
sek, Jaroslav (1883–1923) novelist
Jaroslav Ha
v
sek was born in Prague in 1883 to a
middle-class family. His childhood was uneventful,
but his later years were fraught with alcoholism
and mental instability. He is best known for his
satiric masterpiece The Good Soldier Schweik
(1921). He also created the Party of Peaceful
Progress Within the Limits of Law, a political
party, the financial proceeds from which he spent
at the local pub.
At the start of his literary career, Ha
v
sek was
widely published in political journals. In 1907, he
became the editor of Komuna, a noted anarchist
magazine. He married, but his wife later left him
when he became involved in stealing dogs and
forging pedigrees. After attempting suicide, Ha
v
sek
spent a brief period in a mental institution. In
1915, he began to work as a cabaret performer but
was called to serve in the Austrian army during
World War I. All of these experiences were used to
create the character of Schweik, a drunkard and a
liar who ultimately outwits the army. Other ex-
ploits from Ha
v
sek’s own life that found their place
in his work include his imprisonment in camps in
Ukraine and the Urals during the war, his work as
a propagandist with the Czech Legion, and his ul-
timate return to Prague and nationalist politics.
Critically acclaimed as one of the world’s great-
est satires, The Good Soldier Schweik was first re-
jected by the literary establishment because the
character of Schweik was considered too low class.
An incompetent soldier, Schweik is arrested for
making snide remarks about the assassination of
Archduke Ferdinand and, in another escapade, is
thrown out of an insane asylum when the doctors
suspect him of merely feigning madness. The gen-
eral public, however, responded favorably to his
antics. Four volumes of Schweik’s adventures were
completed, the last published posthumously and
finished by Ha
v
sek’s friend Karel Vanek.
Another Work by Jaroslav Ha
v
sek
The Bachura Scandal and Other Stories and Sketches.
Translated by Alan Menhennet. Chester Springs,
Pa.: Dufour Editions, 1992.
194 Hasˇek, Jaroslav
A Work about Jaroslav Ha
v
sek
Parrott, Cecil. The Bad Bohemian: The Life of Jaroslav
Ha
v
sek, Creator of The Good Soldier Svejk. London:
Bodley Head, 1978.
———. Jaroslav Ha
v
sek: A Study of Svejk and the Short
Stories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982.
Hasluck, Nicholas (1942– ) novelist, poet
Nicholas Hasluck, born in Canberra, Australia, was
the son of Sir Paul and Dame Alexandra Hasluck,
both established writers. His father served on nu-
merous missions to the United Nations and was
governor-general of Australia between 1969 and
1974. His parents’achievements in writing and their
involvement in public life have influenced Hasluck’s
own writing career. After studying law at the univer-
sities of Western Australia and Oxford in 1963 and
1966, respectively, Hasluck worked briefly as an ed-
itorial assistant in London before returning to Aus-
tralia in 1967 to become a barrister.
Hasluck’s literary works reflect his concerns
with political and social issues within Australian
society. In his 1982 novel, The Hand That Feeds
Yo u, a cynical commentary on contemporary Aus-
tralian society, Hasluck observes that the push for
development and progress meets reluctance be-
cause people prefer easy options, such as reliance
on the welfare system. His literature presents a
world of espionage and subversion. The charac-
ters of his novels, such as Dyson Garrick, are com-
pelling figures whose goals are usually hampered
by external factors that lead them to choose be-
tween their dreams and their lives. His poetry,
however, is diffuse and slightly satirical. In the
poem “Anchor” (1976), the “anchor” refers to turn-
ing points or moments suspended in time at which
a person’s life arrives and departs from a new junc-
ture, departing from the old path. This poem illu-
minates Hasluck’s awareness of the transient
nature of life and the importance of events in de-
termining changes in one’s life.
The newspaper The West Australian refers to
Hasluck as “A writer who obviously thinks the truth
and the relationship between art and life are im-
portant matters ...one ofthose rare writers who
can meditate on these issues and at the same time
write highly entertaining stories.” Hasluck’s novel
Our Man K (1999) shows most aptly his desire to
achieve a balance between reality and fiction.
Drawing on historical materials, Hasluck recreates
Egon Kisch (1855–1948), a Czech reporter who
went to Australia in the 1930s to address an antiwar
congress, as his central character. Kisch was a key
figure during the war years, and his controversial
character and his satirical writings form the basis
for Hasluck’s fictional novel. Hasluck’s The Bel-
larmine Jug, a detective thriller set in Holland, won
the Age Book of the Year Award in 1984. The Coun-
try Without Music, a fiction that examines the ear-
lier history of Australia when it was still a penal
colony, was the joint winner of the 1990 Western
Australia Premier’s Award for Fiction.
Other Works by Nicholas Hasluck
Anchor and Other Poems. Fremantle, Australia:
Fremantle Arts Center Press, 1976.
The Blue Guitar. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Win-
ston, 1980.
A Grain of Truth. Melbourne, Australia: Penguin,
1987.
The Hat on the Letter O. (Revised Edition) Fremantle,
Australia: Fremantle Arts Center Press, 1990.
Quarantine. Melbourne and Sydney: Macmillan
Press, 1978.
Truant State. Victoria: Penguin, 1987.
Hauptmann, Gerhart (1862–1946)
playwright, novelist
Gerhart Hauptmann was born in Obersalzbrunn,
Germany, a fashionable resort town, to Robert and
Marie Hauptmann, owners of a small hotel.
Hauptmann entered a gymnasium in Breslau but
had to leave because of conduct problems and
poor academic performance. Hauptmann was
artistically inclined from an early age and initially
rejected formal education. Disturbed by the
attitudes of young Hauptmann, his family sent
Hauptmann, Gerhart 195
him to live with his uncle, a pious estate owner.
Hauptmann spent several years living and working
alongside the peasants on his uncle’s estate, learn-
ing their simple way of life and their deep religious
devotion. Hauptmann eventually changed his atti-
tude toward formal education but remained
adamant in his goal of becoming an artist. He at-
tended an art academy in Breslau, initially intend-
ing to become a sculptor. Hauptmann’s artistic
goals changed, however, and he briefly studied his-
tory at the University of Jena between 1882 and
1883.
Hauptmann studied art in Rome but was forced
to return to Germany because of ill health in 1884.
While in Rome, Hauptmann decided to become a
writer. In 1885, Hauptmann married Marie
Thienemann, an attractive heiress. Thienemann’s
wealth provided the financial support for Haupt-
mann’s artistic goals. After settling in Berlin,
Hauptmann immersed himself in the literary and
intellectual currents of the day.
Gerhardt Hauptmann’s early influences were
derived from the works of German ROMANTICISM.
In Berlin, however, Hauptmann came into a con-
tact with progressive intellectuals who rejected ro-
manticism and fervently advocated REALISM.
Indeed, Hauptmann’s early plays reflect the pro-
found influence of Henrik IBSEN, the master of dra-
matic realism. Consequently, Hauptmann’s themes
are often related to the social and political condi-
tions of German society.
Critical Analysis
In 1889, Hauptmann’s debut play, Vor Sonnenauf-
gang (Before Dawn) attracted attention from many
and shocked its audiences with its candid realism.
The play depicts the relationship between Alfred
Loth, a young socialist who studies the working
conditions in the Silesian coal mines, and Helene
Kraus, a sister-in-law of his former college com-
rade who takes control of the mines. Helene’s fam-
ily is corrupted by the power and money that the
coal mines bring. Alfred Loth leaves Helene after
an intense emotional struggle that results in her
suicide. Hauptmann highlights the intense opposi-
tion and conflict created by corruption and ex-
ploitation of workers.
Die Weber (The Weavers, 1892) dramatizes a re-
volt of the Silesian weavers that occurred in 1844.
The audience was amazed to find no leading hero
in the cast of more than 70 characters. Hauptmann
wrote the play without a leading character to
dramatize the struggle of ordinary people. Viewed
as politically dangerous, The Weavers was at first
banned by the authorities. When the play was fi-
nally performed, it established Hauptmann’s repu-
tation as one of the world’s leading dramatists.
Another play, The Beaver Coat (1893), is a broad
comedy in Berlin dialect about a woman who clev-
erly tricks pompous bureaucrats; it was a great hit
with the public. But Hauptmann began to with-
draw from realism and to focus on the destiny of
individual characters rather than tackling social
problems with Hanneles Himmelfahrt (The As-
sumption of Hannele, 1894), about a peasant girl’s
visionary dream life, and Die versunkene Glocke
(The Sunken Bell, 1897), a mystical verse drama.
In many respects, this shift is associated with tur-
moil in Hauptmann’s personal life. He developed a
romantic relationship with a 14-year-old girl, Mar-
garet Marschalk. In 1904, Hauptmann divorced his
wife and married Marschalk after she became
pregnant. The deep spiritual and psychological
conflict of this relationship is reflected in such
tragedies as Fuhrman Henschell (Drayman Hen-
schell, 1898), which shows the psychological dete-
rioration brought about in its central hero by
domestic conflict.
Although mainly remembered as a dramatist,
Hauptmann was also a prolific novelist. Der Narr
in Christo, Emanuel Quint (The Fool in Christ, Em-
manuel Quint, 1910), Hauptmann’s most famous
novel, reflects in the story of a Silesian carpenter
Hauptmann’s fascination with the figure of Christ.
Indescribable in terms of a single thematic focus,
the novel combines elements of mysticism, fantasy,
symbolism, and folklore to create a complex world
of religious and spiritual ambiguity.
Gerhardt Hauptmann was recognized for his
contributions to world literature when he was
196 Hauptmann, Gerhart
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1912. He remained
in Germany throughout the Nazi period, his ad-
herence to the principles of social justice and so-
cialism remaining strong in the face of the Nazi
harassment and threats. Despite constant recom-
mendations by Hauptmann’s peers, the Nazi
regime adamantly denied him the Schiller Prize,
the most prestigious prize for literature in Ger-
many. By the time he died, his Silesian homeland
had been annexed by the Russian army.
Other Works by Gerhart Hauptmann
Lineman Thiel and Other Tales. Translated by
Stanley Radcliffe. Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour
Editions, 1989.
Plays: Before Daybreak, The Weavers, The Beaver Coat.
Edited by Reinhold Grimm and Caroline Molina y
Vedia. New York: Continuum, 1994.
Three Plays: The Weavers, Hannele, The Beaver Coat.
Translated by Horst Frenz and Miles Waggoner.
New York: Ungar, 1977.
Works about Gerhart Hauptmann
Maurer, Warren G. Understanding Gerhart Haupt-
mann. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1992.
Osborne, John. Gerhart Hauptmann and the Natu-
ralist Drama. London: Routledge, 1998.
Havel, Václav (1936– ) nonfiction,
playwright
Best known internationally as the former president
of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel was born in
Prague. The son of intellectuals who were closely
tied to political uprisings, Havel was prohibited by
the Communist government from finishing school
after his compulsory education. Havel, therefore,
apprenticed as a lab technician and continued tak-
ing night classes.
After serving two years in the military, Havel
took a job as a stagehand at the ABC Theater and
later at The Balustrade, where he became resident
playwright and where his first plays, including his
well-known The Garden Party (1963) were pro-
duced. The Garden Party was a satire of modern
bureaucratic routines.
Havel enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Arts
and graduated in 1967. He also joined the edito-
rial board of Tvárin, a literary magazine that con-
flicted with the conservative Writers’ Association.
The magazine disappeared in 1969, the same year
Havel’s passport was confiscated because of his
supposed subversive writings.
In many of his plays, Havel used satire to com-
ment on social and political issues. In The Memo-
randum (1965), for example, the creation of an
improved language results in a breakdown of
human relationships. The Increased Difficulty of
Concentration (1968), moreover, attacks sociologi-
cal terminology. After the Soviet invasion in 1968,
Havel wrote a series of one-act plays, Audience
(1978), Private View (1978), and Protest (1978), in
which the main character is a playwright in trouble
with the authorities.
Throughout the 1970s, a period of political un-
rest, Havel helped start the human-rights organi-
zation Charter 77 and the Committee for the
Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. His plays were
banned, but the manuscripts circulated privately
and were printed in Western Europe, bringing at-
tention to the Czechoslovakian struggle. As a re-
sult, Havel was subjected to police harassment and
numerous arrests.
After the fall of communism, Havel was presi-
dent of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 2003. His
contribution to politics having grown directly
from his active participation in politically moti-
vated literature. His lifelong dedication to human
rights and democratic reforms are reflected in his
plays, which serve as inspiration to others that the
power of one person can change history.
Another Work by Václav Havel
The Garden Party and Other Plays. New York: Grove
Press, 1993.
Works about Václav Havel
Kriseova, Eda. Vacláv Havel: The Authorized Biogra-
phy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Havel, Václav 197