But this portrait of a man rejecting the claims of bourgeois society for a Rousseauian embrace of Nature and Eros, explores the veiled mysteries of the unconscious by means of thoroughly modern techniques. Pan's quasi-musical modulations of pace and rhythm, its haunting use of leitmotifs which contract and distend time, its startling versions of myth and legend, and its ecstatic evocations of nature in its various phases and moods, all attest to the novel's Modernist innovations.

Pan provides a lyrical, yet disturbing analysis of love and the recesses of the psyche. This superb new translation restores the power and virtuosity of Hamsun's original and includes an informative introduction.