Forgetting as Disguise: Memory Debates of Occupation

This chapter analyses Knut Hamsun’s autobiographical work, On Overgrown Paths, in order to examine how a disputed past and controversial actions are addressed in life writing, and the role played by forgetting where it becomes a central rhetorical device in dealing with the past. In this short text a convergence of different elements of forgetting come together: the natural forgetting of the aging process, the voice of a man at odds with the politics of the day and thereby memory politics, attempting to represent his version of the past, in a meandering and fragmented text which does not provide the solace his readers craved.