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In June 1937, Ernest Hemingway addressed the Second Congress of
American Writers at Carnegie Hall in New York City. His subject was
the Spanish Civil War, which had started in 1936 and which he had
observed first-hand for some months as a correspondent of the North
American Newspaper Alliance. In his speech, which was warmly
received by the audience, Hemingway spoke of his deep hatred for the
fascist forces trying to overthrow the Republican government in Spain,
particularly for the way they suppressed artists, notably writers.
\"Really good writers are always rewarded under almost any existing
system of government that they can tolerate,\" Hemingway said in his
speech. \"There is only one form of government that cannot produce good
writers, and that system is fascism. For fascism is a lie told by
bullies. A writer who will not lie cannot live and work under
fascism.\"
Hemingway\'s apparent devotion to the Republican cause in this war
was greeted with cheers by liberals in the United States. Here was
Ernest Hemingway, a famous novelist, declaring his allegiance to their
cause! His pledge of support seemed particularly welcome, since he had
long resisted public political commitment of any kind and had been
criticized for his reluctance to become involved in the important
issues of the day. Now he had thrown himself into the midst of the
controversy.
Hemingway returned to Spain to watch the battle rage, and he
became increasingly frustrated by the failure of the Republicans to
hold their own against the fascist rebels. He was also sickened by the
corruption and ineptness of Republicans and Nationalists alike. He
called this situation \"the carnival of treachery and rottenness on
both sides,\" and was especially critical of the military leaders.
Hemingway decided that he could best serve the Republican cause by
writing about the war as honestly as possible. \"The hell with war
for awhile,\" he said, \"I want to write.\" The result of his creative
urge was the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was published in
1940, the year after the Republicans had lost the war.
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For someone who lived his adult years with bold, muscular strokes in
public view across three continents, Hemingway\'s early life was
relatively uneventful. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb
of Chicago, on July 21, 1899. His mother was artistic and cultured,
and might have followed a career as an opera singer. She tried to urge
Ernest to develop musical inclinations, but with no results. His great
love was the outdoors, the appreciation of which he learned from his
father, a physician, who relished fishing, hunting, and the lore of
the woods. Ernest acquired ideals of endurance, physical prowess,
and courage that later show up in his writing and his life.
When he was graduated from high school in 1917, Hemingway had no
desire to go to college. His interest was World War I, which had
been raging for three years. He wanted to participate before the
fighting ended, but he was met by disappointment. At first Hemingway\'s
father refused to let him enlist, and when his father finally
relented, the American armed forces rejected Hemingway for poor vision
in one eye.
Hemingway then worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star for six
months until he found a way to participate in the war- as an ambulance
driver with the American Red Cross. By June 1918 he was at the front
lines in Italy. During a furious Austrian shelling of Italian
troops, he carried a wounded soldier to safety, but was struck along
the way by pieces of mortar shrapnel.
The Italian government decorated Hemingway for his heroism,
newspapers printed glowing stories, and a hero\'s welcome awaited him
in Oak Park. But Hemingway was nonetheless plagued by rejection in
other areas: He had fallen in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse
who had cared for him in an Italian hospital, but in 1919 she broke
off their relationship. And his determination to be a writer was
dampened by rejection slips from one magazine after another.
Coloring almost everything was his disillusionment with the values
he had learned while growing up. His experience in the war overseas
had changed his outlook, and he became more and more estranged from
his parents. In Europe he encountered cynicism about the war, not
patriotism, and there was an overwhelming loss of hope and belief in
traditional values.
In September 1921, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson. The couple
moved to Paris, where Hemingway served as a correspondent for The
Toronto Star. Paris was a gathering place for American expatriates-
people who chose to live away from their homeland, mostly because they
were disillusioned or confused about their lives and their country.
One writer dubbed these rootless people \"the lost generation.\"
Hemingway\'s desire to be a full-time writer of fiction was still
unfulfilled. Manuscript after manuscript was turned down by
publishers. Another devastating blow came in December 1923 when a
suitcase containing almost everything he had written was stolen and
never recovered.
But in 1924 a small collection of his short stories, in our time,
was published in Paris. In 1925, retitled with capitals, In Our Time
was published in the United States and ultimately received high
critical praise. His terse, direct style (developed in part by his
need to use as few words as possible as a foreign correspondent) and
his ability to articulate intense, complex emotions without flowery
excess, was greeted with warm welcome by many critics, who saw him
as helping initiate a departure from the verbal indulgences of many
writers of the 19th century. Hemingway further polished his style in
his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926). The book, a telling
depiction of life among American expatriates in Europe, was warmly
received by both critics and the reading public.
In 1927, Hemingway divorced Hadley and married Pauline Pfeiffer, a
writer for Vogue magazine. They moved to Key West, Florida, where he
worked on A Farewell to Arms (1929) and Pauline gave birth to the
first of their two sons. Just as he was completing the final draft
of A Farewell to Arms, which would bring him even more critical and
financial success, he learned that his father- despondent and ill with
diabetes- had shot himself to death. Hemingway considered suicide a
cowardly act, and never forgave his father for it. Yet the suicide
would ultimately have a grim echo in Hemingway\'s own life.
The 1930s brought Hemingway adventure and broad, bold experiences.
He indulged his love for deep-sea fishing off the coast of Florida and
hunting in the American West and Africa. Always seeking intense
physical experience, Hemingway spoke with awe about the thrill of
the \"clean kill.\" He wrote many magazine articles that glorified these
brawny adventures, until the public generally identified him with
the image of the hearty and rugged outdoorsman. Hemingway wrote two
nonfiction books during this period, Death in the Afternoon (1932),
which honored the ritual of the bullfight, and Green Hills of Africa
(1935), detailing the glory of an African safari.
The Great Depression and other world problems helped develop a new
side of Hemingway. Because the heroes in Hemingway\'s novels had been
loners, independent and aloof from the problems of the masses, the
generally left-leaning writers of the time disdained him and his
outlook. That\'s one major reason why Hemingway was cheered so heartily
in his address in 1937 to the Congress of American Writers: this was a
new, politically committed Ernest Hemingway!
Hemingway\'s zeal for the Republican, or Loyalist, cause was revealed
in actions as well as words. He accompanied both regular Republican
army groups and guerrilla bands as a correspondent. He spent time in
the Spanish cities, in the countryside, in the mountains. He also
bought ambulances for the Loyalists, and helped prepare a pro-Loyalist
documentary film, The Spanish Earth.
There was another aspect of Hemingway that lured him to the scene of
battle- his love of conflict itself. It would be simplistic to say
that Hemingway glorified war, as some have charged. He was as sickened
by its cruelty and waste as anyone could be. Yet he was also excited
by what he saw as the more positive aspects of battle- courage,
camaraderie, loyalty, dedication to a cause. According to one
observer, Hemingway was \"attracted by danger, death, great deeds\";
another said he was \"revived and rejuvenated\" by seeing those who
refused to surrender, no matter what the odds. Hemingway was also
buoyed by what he called \"the pleasant, comforting stench of comrades\"
fighting together for a common goal. Instincts similar to those that
drew him to a bullfight or to the stalking of wild game sharpened
his senses during the Spanish Civil War.
It is the conflicting impulses of attraction and repulsion that
create much of the tension in For Whom the Bell Tolls. The publication
of the novel was greeted with acclaim by some, but with disdain by
others. Some liberals and some conservatives were angered because they
felt Hemingway had betrayed them by not writing a novel that favored
their respective political outlook. But Hemingway responded, \"In
stories about the war I try to show all the different sides of it,
taking it slowly and honestly and examining it in many ways. So
never think one story represents my viewpoint because it is much too
complicated for that.\"
For Whom the Bell Tolls was a great commercial success. Paramount
Pictures acquired the film rights for $150,000, an astronomical sum at
the time. Hemingway stipulated who the principal actors should be- the
very popular Gary Cooper would be Robert Jordan, the main figure in
the novel, and the rising star Ingrid Bergman would be Maria, the
guerrilla with whom Jordan falls in love.
In the later 1940s and 50s, the novel\'s critical standing declined
compared with some of Hemingway\'s other works. Readers noted
inaccuracies in the use of Spanish in For Whom the Bell Tolls. They
criticized details of the presentation of Spanish culture, such as the
scene where Agustin, a Spanish guerrilla, asks Jordan about Maria\'s
sexual performance. Such curiosity would violate a strict Spanish code
of decorum. Other readers said the relationship between Jordan and
Maria lacked credibility.
In more recent times the novel has regained critical stature. Some
regard it as Hemingway\'s finest achievement. And few doubt the
personal passion and experience he brought to its writing.
How objective a reporter was Hemingway? Can you read For Whom the
Bell Tolls as an accurate picture of Spain during the civil war?
Opinions vary. His war correspondence itself has received labels
that range from \"stirring accounts\" to \"a kind of sub-fiction in which
he was the central character.\"
In For Whom the Bell Tolls he was objective enough to point out
deficiencies of the Republican side and to write vividly of the
atrocities they committed. He could also show the enemy in a favorable
light. For instance, in the novel\'s final scene, the representative of
the Nationalists, Lieutenant Berrendo, is not an odious barbarian
but a richly human character for whom you may feel considerable
sympathy.
The famous British writer George Orwell, whose books include 1984
and Animal Farm, was another of the many leading writers who became
actively involved in the Spanish Civil War. He wrote Homage to
Catalonia (1938), a detailed recollection of experiences with one of
the Loyalist organizations. You might want to compare the fictional
details of For Whom the Bell Tolls with Orwell\'s account of the way he
saw the war. You will also learn about the war by reading Arthur
Koestler\'s Spanish Testament (1937), a vivid account of the writer\'s
imprisonment by Nationalist forces. Man\'s Hope (1938), by the noted
French intellectual Andre Malraux, is considered a masterly
depiction of early stages of the war. In addition, several
historical works on the Spanish Civil War contain a wealth of
material. Such studies include books by Gabriel Jackson (1965), Hugh
Thomas (1977), and Peter Wyden (1983).
Hemingway\'s second marriage ended in divorce in 1940, and he married
Martha Gellhorn, a writer and foreign correspondent during the Spanish
Civil War. For Whom the Bell Tolls is dedicated to her.
World War II (1939-45) captivated Hemingway. Both his finances and
his reputation were solid, and he needed neither the notoriety nor the
money from being a war correspondent. Nevertheless, he took a job as
chief of the European bureau of Collier\'s magazine. He accompanied the
British Royal Air Force on several bombing raids over occupied
France and crossed the English Channel with American troops on
D-Day, June 6, 1944. He was in the thick of fighting during the
liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge, often seeming as much
a soldier as a correspondent, according to one source.
In 1945, at the age of 46, Hemingway divorced Martha Gellhorn and
married his last wife, Mary Welsh. The couple lived on a luxurious
estate outside Havana, Cuba, until the revolution begun in 1959 by
Fidel Castro forced them to leave.
Hemingway\'s novel Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) was
eagerly awaited. But when published it was scorned, receiving
biting, almost vicious, reviews. Critics accused Hemingway of
writing self-parody; another claimed to feel \"pity, embarrassment,
that so fine and honest a writer can make such a travesty of himself.\"
It became fashionable to consider Hemingway washed up as a writer.
Returning to Africa to re-create some of the adventures of the
1930s, Hemingway was nearly killed in an airplane crash. But he
survived, and went on to write The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, the
last major work published while he was alive. (A Moveable Feast,
Islands in the Stream, By-line: Ernest Hemingway, and The Dangerous
Summer were published after his death.) The Old Man and the Sea
revived Hemingway\'s flagging career. He received a Pulitzer Prize
for the book, and it helped him win the prestigious Nobel Prize for
literature in 1954.
In subsequent years the hearty and death-defying Hemingway began
to lose his health. Nothing, including visits to the Mayo Clinic in
Minnesota, was able to restore him to his previous vigor. His
illnesses (including a rare disease that affects the vital organs)
were compounded by severe states of depression.
Did he decide that, if he could not live as aggressively and
boldly as he once had, he would prefer not to live at all? Whatever
the reason, he took his own life at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, on
July 2, 1961. He shot himself with a silver-inlaid shotgun, choosing a
method used by his father years earlier. He thus duplicated an act
that he had denounced as cowardly.
Hemingway the artist left a rich legacy of work that has found a
permanent place in American literature. That he is likely to endure
can be attributed to many factors, but is perhaps best summed up in
his own words, spoken to the Writer\'s Congress in 1937: \"A writer\'s
problem... is always how to write truly and having found out what is
true to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the
experience of the person who reads it.\" Hemingway wrote truly, and
he becomes part of everyone who reads him.
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