MARCEL PROUST : Du côté de chez Swann (À la recherche du temps perdu I). Second part.

 

MARCEL PROUST : Du côté de chez Swann (À la recherche du temps perdu I). Second part.

 

Proust belongs to the “late encounters” in my literary biography, although I was aware of him, and glanced rather hastily at some pages of À la recherche..., decades ago. That was the epoch of being more obsessed with trying to decode the “economic” and “political” bottlenecks, real or apparent blind alleys, as well as revolutionary proposals, inebriated by moody voluntarism, of our societies, particularly in developing countries. To engage too much time and energy (which is what Proust demands from his readers) in deciphering the divertimenti, imbrogli, amoretti, and

Cover of the Gallimard edition „folio classique“, 2017, detail of Portrait de Madame Charles Max, by Giovanni Boldini, Musée d‘Orsay, Paris.

 tradimenti of the French (rather Parisian, perhaps...) haute bourgeoisie at the peak and the (end?)  of the belle époque before the First World War seemed to me, then, a useless venture, perhaps even an immoral one. I am extremely glad to be able to report that such a “black-and-white” prism has been substantially eroded by time. And by all that goes with it.

 

The decisive encounter took place mid-2011. Living in Spain, I was on my way to South America, making what I thought was going to be a short stop in Paris. Yet black clouds arising over the political horizon in one of those countries, “down there”, forced me to extend my Parisian sojourn, in an hotel in the 14^th arrondissement. Not far from the Rue Daguerre (where I lived for a whole year in 1998), I found a copy of Du côté de chez Swann in a second-hand bookshop, and said to myself, “well, now or never…” The owner, a tall man with a large white beard, looked at me with very much perplexed eyes, saying “are you really going to read this? No one does it nowadays...” He was, of course, exaggerating—though perhaps not that much.

 

It is thus how I began my long, cyclical, off-and-on expedition trough À la recherche..., which has landed me, up to now, at the end of the 3^rd volume, Le côté de Guermantes, after having read, and re-read, À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur, second volume.

 

A first confession has to be admitted. As I start reading Proust, almost always, a poisonous irritation sets upon myself, parallel to a feeling of being forced to do something I should not. It takes about ten, fifteen minutes for that indisposition to fade away, at a slow pace. I believe it has to do with the frustration of not finding “solid ground”, of looking (unsuccessfully) for a kind of Ariadne’s thread which will guide me through the labyrinth. The latter is indeed there, the former also, yet invisible. This irritating prelude is akin to someone stumbling across thick fog, looking for the house which should shelter him, becoming increasingly uneasy at not bumping onto the right path.  

 

Then one just seems to float in a bathtub full of perfumed cotton, letting oneself be transported by the text, which steadily acquires the form a very long dream, a Bruckner symphony, where each moment is in itself a separate symphony.

 

This volume is divided into three parts. The first one is “Combray”, signifying today “Illiers-Combray (re-baptised as such by President Pompidou in 1971, to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Marcel Proust), where his father, Adrien Proust, was born.  It encapsulates mostly the numerous voyages undertaken from Paris to the town where his parents still kept a house, the sojourns thither, the efforts by a child and then a teenager to reconstruct dreams and reality (and the mixture of both), postponing sleep until the weight of souvenirs imposed its law. The teenager constructs his own paradise through books and reproductions of painting and architecture. Both Monsieur Swann and the Guermantes are introduced.

 

“Un homme qui dort, tient en cercle autour de lui le fil des heures, l’ordre des années et des mondes. »[1]

 

It is there, in bed, when the great battle of the memories begins, the struggle to recall the souvenirs, to fix the real experience with persons and art in the unconscious, for ever. So that they might resurface, at their own will, whenever they are needed to console and illuminate the path towards the extinction of life. Proust was, from his earlier hours, a hyper-sensitive human-being. He needs only, either the soundless flaring of the wings of a butterfly, or the reflections of sunshine onto the painted glasses of the church in Combray, or anywhere, for that “other-world” to be reborn.

 

The second part, “Deuxième partie. Un amour de Swann”, often sold separate as an independent novel, begins with one of the most delicious paragraphs of the whole volume:

 

“Pour faire partie du « petit noyau «, du « petit groupe «, du « petit clan « des Verdurin, une condition était suffisante mais elle été nécessaire: il fallait adhérer tacitement à un Credo dont un des articles était que le jeune pianiste, protégé par Mme. Verdurin cette année-là et dont elle disait:»Ça ne devrait pas  être permis de savoir jouer Wagner comme ça!», enfonçait à la fois Planté et Rubinstein...»[2]

 

Cover of the Gallimard Edition, „Un amour de Swann“, prefaced by Volker Schlöndorff, portraying Monsieur Swann (Jeremy Irons) and Odette (Ornella Mutti). 

Yes, Proust was a “Wagnerian”, as were Thomas Mann, T.S. Eliot, J.R. Tolkien and many others, hence one might wish to capitalize on that cognisance, to be able to navigate more at ease through the Proustian ocean. And not altogether directionless. 

 

The axe of this part of the novel is the relationship between Monsieur Swann and the odalisque Odette, an odd and unstable liaison (socially a faux-pas which would render Monsieur Swann a pariah in the salons of the haute-bourgeoisie), plagued by jealousies, betrayals and obsessions. When Monsieur Swann could not see her, as she has travelled elsewhere, he

 

“… il se plongeait dans les plus enivrant des romans d’amour: l’indicateur des chemins de fer, qui lui apprenait les moyens de la rejoindre, l’après-midi, le soir, ce matin même!”[3]

 

The most exhilarating romance-novel: the timetable of the trains which could make a  tête-à-tête possible, at the urge of a whim, as soon as possible… Many will find one’s own echo in this concrete example of one of the techniques in the outillage of Proust’s narrative: that of injecting magic into the most unsuspected, even trivial objects of daily life.

 

An aged (and ill) Monsieur Swann (Jeremy Irons) paying his respects to the Comtesse de Guermantes (Fanny Ardant), under the eyes of the Compte de Guermantes (Jacques Boudet), 1984.

 

The third part, „Troisème partie. Noms de pays: le nom”, is centred on the fictitiously-named Balbec. (largely inspired by Cabourg, on the French Atlantic coast), with the Gran Hôtel de la Plage occupying the centre of the stage. Balbec seems to have been an old family-name in France, though there is the phonetic coincidence with Baalbek, Lebanon, known in antiquity as the Greek Heliopolis, “the city of the sun”. It has already been suggested that the coincidence was not such, rather a chosen signal by the author. 

 

It is the shortest of the three parts of the volume (44 pages out of more than 400), yet perhaps the densest, and the richest in terms of metaphors with regard to the literary reconstruction of the places where the young man seemed to have achieved happiness (or expect to achieve it). What does he dream of, while in Balbec? Of Florence, Venice, Pisa…:

“Sans doute si alors j’avais fait moi-même plus attention à ce qu’il avait dans ma pensée quand je prononçais les mots « aller à Florence, à Parme, à Pise, à Venise « je me serais rendu compte que ce que je voyais n’était nullement une ville, mais quelque chose d’aussi différent de tout ce que je connaissais, d’aussi délicieux ; que pourrait être pour une humanité dont la vie se serais toujours écoulée dans des fins d’après-midi d’hiver, cette merveille inconnue : une matinée de printemps. « [4]

 

What is paradise? Quite simple, it is the arrival of a spring morning in a civilization which has only known hitherto wintery afternoons.

 

And he also dreams about Gilberte, the young lady he used to wait for at the Champs-Elysées. His descriptions of the emotions and the hide-and-seek imbroglios with the young lady do not fail to turn the reader into a becalmed yet also enthusiastic admirer of the writer.

 

 Leaving aside the usual small minority of aesthetes and writers who would not be put off by the apparent boredom of a lengthy text, or the tedious descriptions of social gatherings, and beyond the requirements of syllabi at the Licée in France, and at some universities, at home and abroad, is it worth reading Proust nowadays? The answer is affirmative, at least in the sense of a paleontology approach, which seeks to fix for ever the rites, moers and tastes of the French aristocracy between the end of the 19^th at the beginning of the 20^th century, and of the “haute” – perhaps also not too “haute” - bourgeoisie, seeking to be accepted, or at least respected, by the descendants of the elite which used to run France until 1789.

 

Marcel Proust may belong to that special category of most mentioned, but less read novelists, which can also apply to James Joyce. Between 2004 and 2012, 790.000 copies were sold of Proust’s books, occupying the 38^th position in a ranking of the first 50 “classical” authors (including foreigners) sold in France, Agatha Christie in the 6^th position with 2.650.000 copies and the Austrian Stefan Zweig in the 7^th, with 2.510.000 copies [5]

 

Yet there is more, a “Proustian” Weltanschauung, a vision-of-the-world which has not been constructed as an aleatory, perhaps even arbitrary combination (“Enfin je trouve un lecteur qui devine que mon livre est un ouvrage dogmatique et une construction! »[6], rather on a systematic attempt to discover “une realité plus profonde”[7] underneath the images we perceive from the material world, and the surface of the dreams, the mementos, imposed upon us.

 

To navigate through the Proustian ocean may equal swimming in opaque waters, looking for tiny diamonds, three-four feet below. Many will wonder whether the effort justifies itself, others will point out to more contemporary, easier-to-access novelists. But the diamonds, down on the seabed, ils y sont.

 

One should perhaps imitate the Marilyn Monroe’s method, while reading Ulysses of James Joyce. Just jump at any page, from time to time, and then at another. One may go forwards, and then backwards. One could begin by the end, and end by the beginning. What the text has to offer us remains unaltered. There is, then, “substance” ...

 

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[1]P. 5

[2]P. 185

[3]P. 288

[4]P. 383

[5]Le top 50 des auteurs classiques les plus vendus, https://www.lefigaro.fr/livres/2012/03/14/03005-20120314ARTFIG00604-le-top-50-des-auteurs-classiques-les-plus-vendus.php, 27.7.2020.

[6]Lettre de Proust à Jacques Rivière ; février 1914, p. 461.

[7]„Esquisse pour les deux côtés », p. 436.

MARCEL PROUST : Du côté de chez Swann (À la recherche du temps perdu I).

 

MARCEL PROUST : Du côté de chez Swann (À la recherche du temps perdu I).

 

 A few months ago we were wandering at night through one of those mixtures of dream and nightmare, echoing a discussion on European writers we had with friends in Berlin, the preceding morning. One of them said as of sudden, very loud:

 

“Marcel Proust (*1871-†1922)  is one of the most boring, yet also fascinating and relevant writers in the whole history of French literature.”

 

 “Croquet” (detail), James Tissot, Art Gallery of Hamilton (Canada). Cover of the Gallimard edition, Folio Classique, 2017, read and referred to in this post.

 

We woke up, shaken by the outrageous remark. How could anyone, even if it were just in a nightmare, utter such a statement, related to the opus magnum (and to some extent also opus unicum) of the French writer, supposed to have been qualified by Graham Greene (*1904-†1991)) as “the greatest novelist of the 20^th century”?[1] We have learned, of course, to be cautious vis-à-vis such slippery and dubious superlatives, but the English author of The Power and the Glory was not known to issue eulogies just for the sake of it.

 Yet perhaps there is a reasoning, a founded cogitation in it. The issue is the meaning of “boring”, “ennuyant” in French. Let us ask for the help of the German language, which would render “langweilig”, that is, “long-whiled”. It could mean that it takes the writer “too long” to “get to the point”, in the case of Proust many thousands of pages. But it would be unfair to apply such an adjective to a literary work which explicitly states that there is no “point” in reading it, if you happen to be looking for a “point”… It is quite apart from the traditional novel, centred on a story with a beginning, a development and an end. In fact, it is quite apart from almost anything. Volker Schlöndorff (*1939)[2], the German film-director, was also warned by his classmates in France, when at the age of sixteen he expressed his desire to read him: “Proust is boring...”[3]

 Let us summarise briefly the well-known vicissitudes of the first volume of “À la recherche...”, rejected by most of the prestigious publishing houses in Paris (including by André Gide (*1869-†1951), for the NRF, Nouvelle Revue Francaise, who later repented and begged for excuses from Proust). The “rapport de lecture” de Jacques Madeleine, having confronted the manuscript of “Du côté de chez Swann” :

 

 “Au bout des sept cent pages de ce manuscrit (...) on n’a aucune, aucune notion de ce dont il s’agit. Qu’est que ce tout cela vient faire ? Qu’est que tout cela signifie ? Ou tout cela veut-il mener ?» (...)  La lettre jointe au manuscrit apporte quelques éclaircissements (...)    Elle avoue qu’il ne se passe rien dans ces sept cent pages, que l’action n’y est pas engagé...»[4]

 700 pages were “nothing” really happens… Who is going to read it? The publishing house Fasquelle refuses it. Another prestigious maison d’édition, Ollendorf, does not hesitate to also close the doors to the ambitious author :   

                                                              
“Je suis peut-être bouché à l’émeri, mais je ne puis comprendre qu’un monsieur puisse employer trente pages à décrire comment il se tourne et se retourne dans son lit avant de trouver le sommeil »[5]

 «I might not be the smartest of fellows, but I cannot understand why a gentleman should employ thirty pages to describe how he turns and turns on his bed, before falling asleep.”

 Yet such an achievement does require talent–and stamina.

 Printed in 1913 by Grasset at the “author’s expenses”, the initial reception was not very enthusiastic.  Letters discovered not a long time ago confirm that Monsieur Proust did pay at least three journalists, to publish favourable reviews of his work, for Le Figaro and La Revue de Deux Mondes. Today’s equivalent of such” sweeteners” would be around 1,300 Euros each. It is with the Prix Goncourt, 1919, for “À l’ombre des...”, that Proust reputation and readership begins to enter a stable and solid path, within and outside France.

 Let us concentrate on the first volume, though having the next two not that far away.

“Cathédrale de Rouen. Le portrait de la Tour Saint-Romain à l‘aube“, Claude Monet. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Cover of the Gallimard edition, Folio Classique, 2001. We apologise for the derelict state of the book, but we bought it second-hand in 2011, and it then underwent further suffering during numerous voyages. Apart from constant annotations, insertion of markers and supplementary material.

We will begin by using a “film” to, first of all, state what is at stake, even now, when any attempt to “recreate” Marcel Proust is engaged. Another puzzle: Perhaps one of the less “cinematic” writers of modern times (almost no “action”), yet it seems to have had a sorcerous impact above all on cinematographers.  It is the Proustian approach which fascinates, rather than the intertwined perambulation of it dozens and dozens of characters in his novel. Edgar Reitz (*1932), the famous German film-director of Heimat[6], was asked at the end of 2013, on the occasion of the first screening of the sequel Die andere Heimat, which were the film-makers who had the greatest influence upon him:

 “None. My whole approach comes from Marcel Proust.”[7]

 The French writer keeps exercising an almost enigmatic enchantment on cinematographers and writers alike.  It makes an unexpected appearance in the historic film-version (1946)[8] of the novel of Raymond Chandler (*1888-†1959), The Big Sleep (first edition 1939), whose screenplay was the work of William Faulkner (*1897-†1962), Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman. Here is one of the iconic dialogues, perhaps the one to be remembered for ever, between Humphrey Bogart (private eye Marlowe) and Lauren Bacall:

 

 

 

 Humphrey Bogart answer is: “Come into my boudoir.” An endearing and pertinent appearance, as Chandler can be considered the classiest and relevant “opposite” of Marcel Proust in terms of narrative, the American being acknowledged as the master of “hard-boiled” thrillers.  No doubt the Nobel-Prize winner William Faulkner had a key role in drawing the rainbow between the two very much dissimilar writers.

 Decades afterwards, we find again Proust in one of the most remarkable, moving and aesthetically brilliant films of the first twenty years of the 21^st century: La Grande Bellezza, (2013), directed by Paolo Sorrentino(*1960)[9]. In the middle a huge, and noisy, probably also decadent, party of the flashy, snobbish society of Rome, a woman and a man seek to find refuge in the French writer:

 

 

 

Translating from Italian into English, the woman “I am devoting myself to my first novel, a sort of Proustian thing...”, the man: “ah, do you know that Proust is my favourite writer? “

Some efforts have been made (with mixed results) to reproduce Proust’s world onto the screen. The most remarkable is the 1984 film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, “Un amour de Swann/Eine Liebe von Swann”, a French-German co-production based on the second part of “Du côté… [10] Lead male and female figures were Jeremy Irons (Charles Swann), and Ornella Mutti (Odette). Accompanied by Alain Delon (Baron de Charlus), and a ravissante Fanny Ardant (Comptesse de Guermantes), among others.

 The “Making of the Film”[11], which is centred on an interview with Volker Schlöndorff, gives us some delicious insider details of what it means to tackle one of the “monuments” of French culture in the 20^th century. It equals throwing yourself into a wasp-nest, where highly sensitive commercial, linguistic and political issues had to be confronted with, plus the ego and the mannerisms of world-known actors and actresses.

 It seems that one branch of the Rothschild family was in possession of at least the cinematographic rights of the novel, yet they needed to make a film, in order to avoid the rights falling onto the public domain (1987). A first attempt, with Peter Brook et al conceiving the screenplay, had to be abandoned, and Schlöndorff was hired, as he had been French-educated, having also worked as assistant to Jean-Pierre Melville (*1917-†1973). The German director chose Jeremy Irons for the main male role, “Monsieur Swann”, as he was able to speak fluent French. The Italian Ornella Mutti would not have been the first choice for many (she herself was surprised by the offer…), but Schlöndorff insisted, as she could best incarnate Odette, the still young, innocent-looking courtisane . No less important, she spoke German, her mother having been born near the Baltic sea, hence the communication with the director was smooth and effective. Alain Delon was imposed right from the beginning to incarnate le baron de Charlus, as commercial proprietors of the rights were aware that a big “French name” was needed to assure the critical reception, and the expected profit-maximising revenues.

 The complex question to be answered is whether, as Schlöndorf stated,  “Kann man den Stil eines Autors verfilmen?”, you can “cinematise” the style of an author. “You cannot really film Proust, we will have a go at it anyway, to see what comes out...”

 A first solution to the overwhelming complexity of the whole oeuvre, translated onto the screen: The action is reduced to only one day (plus a short epilogue thirty years later), trying to summarise in twenty-four-hours the relationship between Swann and Odette, in “Un amour de Swann”. There is, of course, an echo of Ulysses (1922) of James Joyce (*1882-†1941), where seven hundred pages are used to describe the wanderings and the inner world, the “stream of consciousness”, of the main protagonist, during twenty-four hours. “A day which contains the whole life”, is the sub-title, or paraphrase, of the version proposed by Schlöndorff.

 A second solution, having in mind how to compensate “the lack of “action”. Great emphasis is given to the re-creation, up to the tiniest details, of the époque. Architecture, furniture, wardrobe, members of the French aristocracy participating as “extras” in many scenes, accents, postures (women of the upper class, when seated, never touched the backrest, so as to force themselves to keep their back a straight as possible) and mannerisms were all studied before, counting on the advice of experts. The jewellery for the ladies, created between the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th centuries, was obtained on loan from Cartier, as the famous Parisian house keeps a register of all jewels sold ever since, and re-buy those originals which re-appeared at auctions. Schlöndorff: “A woman notices the difference between a true diamond, and an artificial copy. And she acts, walks, speaks differently...” It meant that for most of the shooting of the film body-guards of Cartier were present, as well as the personal one of Alain Delon, plus a shepherd dog, “which obeyed only instructions from Delon, and kept terrifying all of us” (so Schlöndorff).

 Yet the great “power game” did not take long to erupt. Delon could not accept that he was a “secondary male figure”. Returning to the shooting-location one evening (he had forgotten something) Schlöndorff finds, to his greatest astonishment, Delon and Mutti in costumes, posing embraced together, with photographers working under headlights. “What is this? You are not the couple in love of the film?”. Delon: “It is just for the family album...”  On the following Monday all newspapers and magazines in France headlined the photos, portraying Delon as the “partner” of Odette, and the main male character of the film.  Jeremy Irons was understandably devastated.  Schlöndorff also, as he feared the French would think he was an “ignorant, a barbarian German”, who knew nothing about Proust. The shooting lasted two weeks more. Schlöndorff never spoke again to Alain Delon, giving him only written instructions, transmitted by an attendant.

 We should not be surprised if we were to learn, in the near future, that the Culture Minister of France then, perhaps even the President, urged Alain Delon to “do something”, in order to avoid one of the cathedrals of French literature being “kidnapped” by an English actor, an Italian actress, and a German film-director.

 We will come back soon with a more detailed analysis of the first volume of “À la recherche...“.

 On the 18^th of May of 1922, six months before his death, Proust went to a dinner at the “Ritz” in Paris. Among his fellow diners were James Joyce, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso. What could have been the main subjects of conversation?

 

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[1]Quoted as such in White, Edmund (1999), Marcel Proust, a life, Penguin, p. 2.

[2]Became a well-known director worldwide thanks to the film version of “Die Blechtrommel” (The tin drum), the novel by Gunther Grass, which received the Oscar for the best film in a foreign language in 1980. Golden Palm in Venice, 1979.

[3]“Un amour de Swann/Liebe von Swann”, Presseheft,

[4]Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann, Gallimard, Collection Folio Classique,  2001. Pp 446-450. Pseudonym of Jacques Normand, who had some old scores to settle with Proust.

[5]Proust (2001), Préface d’Antoine Compagnon, p. XXII.

[6]Heimat I (first part of a trilogy) came in 1984, causing a sensation, as the audiences were asked to sit through all 15 hours 40 minutes, in four consecutive nights. “BBC 2 later screened this colossus over 11 consecutive nights, and on the channel’s 40^th birthday last year (2004), Heimat was voted one of its 40 highlights – the only foreign name on a list that ranged from “Civilisation” to “Faulty Towers”. The Independent, 04.05.2006.

[7]He has, many times, been labelled as “the Marcel Proust in the history of cinema”. An article in The Independent, on 04.05.2005, states: “The epic films of Edgar Reitz have been compared by some to the works of Tolstoy, by others to soap operas. Reitz himself says that his inspiration was Marcel Proust, and the connection seems suddenly so obvious that I’m surprised nobody has made it before.”

[8]Director, Howard Hawks. There is a 1945 version, unreleased, which was restored and released in 1997.

[9]Screenplay by Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello, Toni Servillo in the main male role. Awarded the Oscar in 2013 for the best film in a foreign language, idem by the Golden Globe Awards (2014) and the British Academy Film Awards (2014).  The epigraph at the beginning of the film is a quote from the novel Voyage au bout de la nuit, de Louis-Ferdinand Céline (*1894-†1961).

[10]Original screenplay by Peter Brook, Jean-Claude Carriere, Marie-Helene Estienne. Retained by Schlöndorff.

[11] #Making of the film, 2008

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: “A FAREWELL TO ARMS”.

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[1] 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[2]. 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.

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[1]Allowed to be published in Italy only in 1948, as the Fascist regime in that country considered it “offensive” to the honour of the Italian armed forces. The original American edition was censored, Hemingway adding later on by hand the censored text in at least two copies, one of them dedicated to James Joyce.

[2]Agnes von Kurowsky, (*1892-†1984), born in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[3]One can have a look at the woman, dressed as a nurse, in Internet, just to understand why not only Hemingway would have been (delightfully) intoxicated by her.