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By tracing an alternative aesthetics of decomposition and fragmentation, this article offers a new understanding of the literary and poetological strategies Knut Hamsun uses to create a disintegrating text cosmos wherein the idea of ‘creation out of nothing’ ( creatio ex nihilo ) is one key to artistic originality. The article explores the interdependence of different notions of decline and shows that the image of the (biblical) fall is particularly important to the poetics and aesthetic structure of Hamsun’s  Hunger  ( Sult ,  1890 ). Around 1900, ideas of wholeness crumble, a decomposition which is reflected in the well-established philosophical and anthropological experiments of Nietzsche, Bourget and Simmel. Taking some of their aesthetic assumptions as a point of departure, the present paper argues that Hamsun’s novel offers an aesthetic variation on the decline of unity-based concepts, ranging from the subject to religious belief as well as to traditional storytelling.

“Speak your word and break!”: Figures of Decomposition and (Creative) Recomposition in Knut Hamsun’s Hunger