Compiled and edited by Chen Yong
[Continued]
Five. An icebreaker in the literary world
3. Never Give Up: "The Old Man and the Sea" shook the world
The material of Hemingway's works is mostly taken from his own life and has a strong autobiographical color. Boating and sea fishing, hunting in Africa, watching bullfighting, going to the battlefield, every cross-section of life has been written into his works, achieving one creative peak after another. He actively participates in the rolling torrent of life, and life is also generous, giving him a steady stream of materials and inspiration, so that he always maintains a strong creative force. He rode the fiercest horse, fished the biggest fish, went to the farthest distance, felt the ultimate truth and cruelty, so he wrote a hearty article and became the literary benchmark of the times.
But autobiographical writing is actually a risky one, not only because one's life experience is limited, but it can also be controversial, especially for the image of a "tough guy" character like Hemingway. "Tough guys" are not easy to do, Hemingway wrote in Francis. Mr. McComber, portrayed in McComber's Short And Happy Life, also illustrates the great difficulty of overcoming fear from the opposite side.
The famous saying in "The Old Man and the Sea", "A man can be destroyed, but cannot be defeated", is still remembered a hundred years later.
In fact, before the publication of The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway had not written anything for a long time because of his injury. His creativity gradually declined, and the works he delivered were not satisfactory. Just as the old fishermen in the town where Hemingway lived, who went to sea for more than eighty consecutive days but found nothing, the townspeople commented that "this old man is estimated to be unable to do it." At that time, the literary circles were also lamenting that Heming William was quite old and sharp, and they regarded him as a "nail in the eye", and they commented on him for two days. Enduring the sudden criticism of all sides, coupled with the pain of years of injuries and falls, Hemingway was physically and mentally exhausted.
It was not until 1949 that Hemingway's good friend Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature. This greatly stimulated him, how could a strong Hemingway lose? He wants to tell the whole world that a man can be destroyed, but not defeated.
At this time, Hemingway had just been diagnosed with sepsis, and many people thought that he would not live long. Hemingway gritted his teeth, endured fever and pain, and wrote "The Old Man and the Sea" in just 8 weeks, which has to be said to be a major breakthrough that shocked people's hearts. The book's story, which revolves around an elderly Cuban fisherman wrestling with a giant marlin in the Gulf Stream far offshore, perfectly embodies the author's statement that you can destroy him, but you can't defeat him.
Born out of a difficult situation, the book won him two prizes— the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize, which really fulfilled what he said— that life always scars us, but in the end, those wounded places will become our strongest places. "The Old Man and the Sea" is another great self-breakthrough in Hemingway's life, a book that combines faith, will, tenacity, courage and strength, which makes people thoroughly understand what the indestructible spiritual force is like. Those who cannot defeat you will eventually make you strong. Breaking through the self is the process of breaking through the inherent beliefs, values, memories and cognitive thinking of the self. We must completely remove the spiritual shackles of self-limitation from the habits of thinking, always remember that everywhere is goal-oriented, complex things are simplified, all thinking behaviors that are in line with their goals are the best, and all thinking behaviors that do not conform to their goals must be abandoned in order to achieve a real breakthrough of self.
It is worth mentioning that the prototype of the elderly fisherman really lived for a long time. When The Old Man and the Sea came out, he was exactly 50 years old and 104 years old when he died.
This is Hemingway's personality, and his work has been deeply imprinted with uniqueness and innovation. The world's largest prison is man's cognitive thinking consciousness. Hemingway dares to break through self-knowledge, his life is not going the ordinary way, he is the icebreaker of the traditional literary world, he is the leader of the concise style, so he becomes a unique leader in the literary world, he dares to fight, break the shackles of the past literary world, and strive to learn to break through the self, whether it is writing or life, just like he wrote in the novel - superior to others, not noble, the real nobility should be better than the past self!
[Our so-called common sense and right and wrong value judgments are our prejudices, and often we regard these prejudices as principles as the standard of value judgments, thus becoming a ubiquitous habit of self-limiting thinking. We never realize that we must break all these spiritual shackles of restrictive beliefs in order to truly live out ourselves, so "all the memory consciousness, inherent beliefs, cognitive thinking, and value judgments in our lives are the bottlenecks and spiritual shackles that affect our ability to live out our egos!" Only by always being vigilant and breaking through the limitations of ubiquitous cognitive thinking habits can we break through ourselves and become our true selves." ——Breaking through the secret law of the self】
To be continued, please continue to pay attention to Hemingway's fate to change the world serial biographical story - Chapter 6, Issue 1, Chapter 6, Issue 2.