Carl Joachim Hambro (philologist)

Carl Joachim Hambro (7 June 1914 – 19 February 1985) was a Norwegian novelist, journalist, essayist, translator and Romance philologist. The son of the Conservative politician C. J. Hambro, he embarked on a philological career, graduating in 1939. During the Second World War he taught at Oslo Commerce School and the Norwegian College in Uppsala. After the war, he taught Norwegian at Sorbonne, whilst also working as Paris correspondent for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and a few Norwegian daily newspapers.

Born into a well-read and educated family, Hambro developed a penchant for French literature, marking an incongruity to the literary taste of his parents—they had been readers of English literature in the Anglo-American tradition. Making his debut in 1960 with the satirical novel De frafalnes klubb, Hambro published trilogies and other novels for the next two decades. He had a keen interest in linguistics; in the 1969 book Ting, tanke, tale he problematized linguistic questions in a popular scientific way. A translator of French literature, he chaired the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators in the early 1960s.

Personal life

Hambro was born in Kristiania (now Oslo), capital of Norway. He was the third of four sons born to Carl Joachim Hambro (1885–1964), the President of Parliament and long-time leader of the Conservative Party, and his first wife, Gudrun "Dudu" Grieg (1881–1943).^[1][2][3] On his date of birth, 7 June 1914, his father, for whom he was named, made a speech at the Jubilee Exhibition commemorating the 1814 constitution in the Frogner Park.^[1] The twins Edvard and Cato were his elder brothers; his younger brother, Johan, biographised their father.^[4] Living in the Uranienborg neighbourhood of Western Oslo, the Hambro family belonged to the upper-class society of early 20th-century Norway,^[1] and was, according to the biographer Tormod Petter Svennevig, intellectually engaged;^[5] its forebears included both businesspeople and women's rights activists, of whom many were active in politics.^{[4][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]}

On 15 July 1939, Hambro married Wenche Rynning-Koren (born 1916);^[2] They had one son together. Upon his divorce from Rynning Koren, Hambro married Christine Holter (born 1931).^[14] They had two daughters, one of them Ellen Hambro, who would later become director of Norway's Climate and Pollution Agency.^[15][16] Carl Joachim Hambro died on 20 February 1985^[17] and was buried in Grefsen.^[18]

Career

Hambro finished his secondary education in 1932 when taking the examen artium at Fagerborg Upper Secondary School.^[19] He had attended the Latin class, together with writer Niels Christian Brøgger and future Nazi politician Kaare Martin, among others.^[20]

Having made study trips to London and Paris in the mid-1930s, Hambro graduated from university with a cand.philol. degree in 1939.^[19] At the outbreak of war, he was employed at the Oslo Commerce School, where he lectured until 1943. Hambro spent the latter part of the war in Uppsala, Sweden, where he taught at the Norwegian College and chaired the local Norwegian Society (1943–1944). After the war he returned to Oslo, teaching at the Commerce School until 1946. He lectured in French literature at the Norwegian Library College in two spells, during and after the war: from 1940 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1946.^[2][19] For the rest of the decade he taught Norwegian at Sorbonne, France.^[3] He also worked as a correspondent for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (1946–1948), Dagbladet (1946–1948), Verdens Gang (1948–1949) and Arbeiderbladet (1949–1951).^[3][21] From 1951 to 1952 he was a press worker for the Research Councils in Norway and for the Norwegian delegation to the United Nations.^[19] In that decade he mainly acted as cultural counsellor at the Norwegian embassy in London. Employed in 1952, he acted in that position for seven years, whereupon he returned to Oslo.^[3] He was assistant teacher in French at the University of Oslo from 1963 to 1965;^[14] in that position he bemoaned the compentence of his students in their own mother tongue, maintaining that the Norwegian language should be used more in foreign-language education.^[22]

In 1958, influenced by the country of his early adulthood, Hambro released a non-fiction book titled Frankrike ("France").^[3] His love for France was not inherited from his parents: the elder Carl Joachim and Dudu were fervent anglophiles, the former having both written and translated English-language works, and the latter having been a voracious reader of Anglo-American novelists from Rudyard Kipling to Aldous Huxley.^[6][23]

His debut novel, the satirical De frafalnes klubb ("The Club of the Estranged"), was published in 1960.^[3] It tells a story of some fatigued cynics in France who create a new philosophical and literary "-ism", which gains worldwide popularity.^[24] According to Brikt Jensen, Hambro critiques "the modern human being [which embraces] the first philosophical system that comes to sight".^[25] In his review for Verdens Gang, Jensen commended Hambro for his "un-Norwegian" perspective, calling him a "distinct European".^[25] The literary scholar Willy Dahl opined that the novel denotes Hambro's declared scepticism towards "every sort of intellectual or political pigeonholing",^[24] a scepticism that he shared with his father C. J. Hambro, whose disdain for radical and totalitarian ideologies was well known. The elder Hambro was also, according to the literary scholar Per Thomas Andersen, vital for the next literary work of the younger Hambro: he provided biographical content to a trilogy comprising the novels Frels oss fra det gode (1963), Utfor stryket (1964) and Vi vil oss en drøm (1966), which delineate the adolescence of a young man named Nico Dietmeyer in the West End of Oslo.^[26][27] The first of them was favourably reviewed by Brikt Jensen in Verdens Gang, who called it "a declaration of love for Oslo";^[28] reviewing for the same newspaper, Ragnhild Lorentzen gave the next novel a laudatory review, commending Hambro for having taken an important task upon his shoulders, whilst also criticising him for blurring the line between adolescence and adulthood.^[29] Dahl argues that these novels constitute an unpretentious, yet perspicacious criticism of the necessity of conformity in that milieu, whilst Andersen considers them to be stories about double standards and liberation from one's father.^[24][26] In September 1966 Hambro delivered a vehement critique of the Norwegian education system in the pamphlet Er gymnasiaster mennesker?.^[3][30][31] The last novel of his trilogy about Nico Dietmeyer was released in November of the same year; Lorentzen considered the first part of the book to be somewhat verbose and anticipative, concluding her review by calling the novel an unoriginal yet well written book.^[27] Hambro continued with Bjørnen sover ("The Bear Is Sleeping") in 1967, a marriage novel that disappointed the critics,^[24][32] before releasing his semantic and psycholinguistic study Ting, tanke, tale in 1969.^[3] The journalist Iver Tore Svenning recognizes this work as one of the very few successful attempts at a popular scientific treatment of structural linguistics,^[33] a view supported by Dahl.^[24] Hambro's last novels were Nødhavn and Lekkasje, released in 1971 and 1974.^[3][17] The former book is about a love affair between an erstwhile cultural radical and a young woman with aggressive political opinions. The affair makes, according to Dahl, the cultural radical think about his nonconformist past, yet he abandons it, and seeks safety in the bourgeoisie class.^[24]

He nevertheless continued his writings, albeit in the non-fiction genre: in the 1970s he penned numerous articles on political and literary topics for Norwegian newspapers and periodicals.^[3] He especially contributed to the periodicals Vinduet and Samtiden.^[19] In 1972 he resumed his endeavour to popularise linguistics: together with Erik Rudeng and Knut Svortdal he released Språket i funksjon ("Language in Operation"), an introductory book to improve language comprehension and essay writing. Rudeng later recalled that it cited philosophers and linguists hitherto unknown in Norwegian public discourse, amongst them Michel Foucault (1926–1984).^[34] Hambro's obituarist Finn Jor describes him as a man fond of debate with a keen interest in societal issues, yet who was no front person in public dialogue, not possessing the eloquence of his father.^[17] In the latter part of his life he wrote books on the Norwegian authors Jens Bjørneboe and Arnulf Øverland.^[3] He was active in the Norwegian Authors' Union, becoming known as "a man of compromises" after having calmed a linguistic debate in the union.^[33]

A renowned translator of French prose, Hambro was awarded the Bastian Prize in 1963 for his translation of Claude Simon's The Flanders Road.^[35] He chaired the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators from 1961 to 1965.^[3]

References