2. ERNEST HEMINGWAY: “A FAREWELL TO
ARMS”
There is a church in Berlin,
Germany, which as of late has become a valuable source for avid readers.
Parishioners and passers-by are able to either pick up or leave a book on a pew
outside, in a roofed corridor, secluded from wind and rain. The improvised
library offers almost all types of books and magazines, sometimes yellowed old
editions and cherished classics. It is thus in a “Lutheran environment” that
last year I came in possession of a 1976 Soviet edition of “A farewell to
arms”, the novel first published in 1929 by the American writer Ernest
Hemingway(*1899-†1961), which consolidated his
career.
Thanks were expressed by this writer
to the Saint whom the church is devoted, as this hard-back edition, still with
its original dust jacket, only slightly damaged, is a wonderful, unique specimen,
almost a collector’s precious antique. The text of the novel is in English, but
the introduction, pp 3-21, is in Russian, written by M. Mendelson. T. Tolstoi
illustrated the dust jacket, as well as providing some salient drawings inside.
“Progress Publishers Moscow” intended this edition as a textbook for learning
English, mainly inside the former Soviet Union, a suitable one, as its anti-war
scented narrative did not infringe any major ideological prerequisite.
The original purpose of the edition
is confirmed by the “Notes” to the introduction and literary text, almost 300,
written in English, as the editors assumed that most of the average educated
Soviet citizen would not know what a “hamburger steak” was. Neither “Cinzano”
or “chianti”. “Spaghetti” and “choucroute” are duly
explained, as well as the U.S. slang “monkey meat”, to designate
“tinned meat”, a trouvaille also for the writer of these lines. Among
others, we have “margaux”, described as “Château Margaux, the finest
Bordeaux wine made in Médoc, south-western France”, “Campari”,
Biffi”, “fashionable restaurant in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuel”,
as well as Bachus, “the god of wine in Roman mythology”. Hence the
expression “Bachus-barred”, never heard by this writer before, “without
considering Bachus”, a metaphysical category most feared by Hemingway and
his pals at that time in northern Italy. Due notice was paid to “grappa”, and
to “capri bianca”, “White Capri, a light wine made in Capri”. It is more
elegant to describe one-self as “wine-fully”, rather than “drunkenly”. There is
“pasta asciutta”, decoded as “macaroni”,
“soufflet”, and “puree de marron” as “puree of chestnuts”.
Such a list with amiable
commentaries not only indicates the type of luxuries the average Soviet citizen
did not have access at the end of the 1970s. It also introduces us to the
amenities and precious Delikatessen Ernest Hemingway, his American,
Italian comrades as well, gave their preferences, whilst they were not engaged
in the front-lines near the Alps, during the First World War, in 1918. Fighting a war? Yes, although this is not a typical “war-novel”,
descriptions of military action being scarce and detached. Hemingway, as well
as the first-person narrator, was in the ambulance corps of the Italian army,
having been turned back by the American army because of his poor eye-sight. Yet
he was seriously injured, showing bravery and solidarity, a war-experience
which lasted only through the last months of the fighting between the Austrians
and the Italians in 1918. It provided him with substantial raw materials for
this, as well for future novels, lasting scars in his artistic, and personal
life.
Any “war-novel” without at least one “love-story” is not really a novel, and
perhaps vice-versa. The backbone of the
narrative is a sweet sentimental imbroglio between
the first-person narrator. “tenente (lieutenant) Frederic Henry”,
serving in the ambulance corps of the Italian army, and a handsome English nurse, Catherine
Barkley, who takes care of the injured American. They try to stay together,
despite the upheavals of the conflict which separates them, and would at the
end become a couple on the run, taking final refuge in Switzerland,
where a modest love-nest would keep them warm and happy, for a while. The
landscape of this romance is la guerre en sous-vêtements, akin to a reportage on
the ups and downs of the military conflagration from a decrepit kitchen, a
shabby bathroom.
Flashy heroes do not abound, except
for the humble civilians trying to survive and those working in the infirmary, like
the head-nurse in the military hospital making sure that underneath the bed of
the patients, and in the cupboards, there were no empty (or still full) bottles
of forbidden liquor. It is the usually
untold non-valiant and shadowy side of any such a conflict which emerges,
almost en passant, yet nevertheless resounding. The temptation of
self-inflicted injuries, soldiers and officers running away or hiding in small
and secluded hamlets, well-organised mafias providing forged documentation and
uniforms to those willing to circulate without being molested (or forced into
conscription), the military police of the Italian army executing on the spot,
more or less on a whim, without trial, anyone
suspected of having deserted the front line, or his regiment.
There is, of course, the customary
refuge for the great majority of those forced to do “something” in any war:
alcohol. And brothels. As Italy was run—at that time—by a monarchy, there were two types
of bordello: one for officers, another for soldiers. Hierarchy and social distinction had to be
maintained, even if a war was being lost. No information is available, in this
novel, or elsewhere, as to whether the purveyors of carnal services in those
institutions were also separated into “enough quality for an officer” and
“basic enough for a soldier”.
“A farewell to arms” was well-received,
when it first came out, and it is usually considered one of Hemingway’s best
novels. It has been adapted for the stage, many times as a film and television
miniseries. I confess that, as far as I can remember, I have not seen any of
those adaptations, nor do I feel any
pressing desire to do it. The same goes for The old man and the sea, his
other masterpiece. It seems that in the case of Hemingway’s literary writing,
the text in itself is enough.
There are many reasons to come back
to Hemingway, if only from time to time. It helps to remind anyone, interested
in writing or not, never to forget one of the most powerful tools in any
narrative: a short, simple sentence.
In most of the descriptions, as well
as in the dialogues, Hemingway goes first to the bones, that is, nouns,
pronouns and verbs, adding ex post accessories like a seedy moneylender,
who allows a rusty penny to drop very much reluctantly. His prose resounds like pebbles falling onto
a brook, producing just the required echo, clean and precise. Here is an
example of that style, a dialogue between the nurse and the tenente.
First the woman:
“There, darling. Now you are all
clean inside and out. Tell me. How many people have you ever loved?”
“Nobody.”
“Not me even?”
“Yes, you.”
“How many others really?”
“None.”
“How many have you—how do you say it?”
“None.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“Yes.”
“It’s all right. Keep right on lying
to me. That’s what I I want you to do. Were they pretty?”
“I never stayed with any one.”
“That’s right. Were they very
attractive?”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“You’re just mine. That’s true and
you’ve never belonged to any one else. But I don’t care if you have. I am not
afraid of them. When a man stays with a girl when does she say how much it
cost?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course not. Does she say she
loves him? Tell me that, I want to know that.”
“Yes. If he wants her to.”
“Does he say he loves her? Tell me
please. It’s important.”
“He does if he wants to.”
“But you never did? Really?
“No.”
“Not really. Tell me truth.”
“No,” I lied.
“You wouldn’t,” she said. “I knew
you wouldn’t. Oh, love you, darling.”
Yet to create a novel (in the sense
of becoming a world in itself) does not suffice to just expose the bare
skeleton. Feelings, emotions, fears, they all have to be there for the reader.
But without a “florid eloquence”, as pointed out by M. Mendelson in his
introduction to the 1976 Soviet edition:
“В молодости Хемингуэй прошел прекрасную школу
газетной работы, и это помогало ему быть конкретным и безупречно правдивым в
описаниях, помогало отчетливо видеть то, что находится перед глазами, и крепко
запоминать виденное, фиксировать его неискаженно, избегая малейшей
выспренности, претенциозности, «цветов красноречия». Но если бы писатель
придерживался просто «фотографического» метода в своей творческой практике, то
он не смог бы писать книги, которые живут уже очень много лет и, надо думать,
будут дороги не одному грядущему поколению.»
Let us translate it not too
literally, in order to get to core of the matter:
“In his youth, Hemingway went through an excellent
school of newspaper work, and this helped him to be concrete and impeccably
truthful in descriptions, helped him to clearly see
what he had in front of his eyes, to remember well what he saw, to fix it undistortedly, avoiding even the slightest arrogance, pretentiousness, any “florid eloquence". But if the writer had adhered simply to the “photographic” method in his
creative practice, he would not have been able to write books that have been
alive for many years and, one should think so, will still be cherished by more than one future
generation.”
It is well known that the leitmotiv
of this novel is heavily based on Hemingway’s own liaison with an American
nurse, of half-German origin. This passionate affair,
which was about to conclude in marriage, took a sudden turn for the worse,
leaving Hemingway devastated[3].
Such a personal disaster is not easy to surmount, perhaps impossible to forget.
Yet it may also provide the main bearer of the tragedy with a kaleidoscope of
pains and destroyed dreams, though capable of being recycled into some kind of
work of art. An artistic crystallization, to act as catharsis, healing balsam, a final farewell, perhaps
even a tender “I-will-forgive-you”, above all, a trampoline to expurgate the
past and start dreaming of a new future. That is a rare privilege bestowed by
the Greek gods (provided they are not “in a saturnine mood”…) upon a tiny
minority of artists. Ernest Hemingway was one of them.
