Hemingway behind the "symbol"

(Image source: CFP/Courtesy photo)

KingHengShan/Wen

Among american classic writers, if you want to choose a character who wins with idol charm, I am afraid it is Hemingway. Hemingway is a symbol, a representative of style, a representative of an attitude towards life, a representative of a spiritual outlook. Hemingway's idol symbols can be seen in some of his widely circulated photographs. There is a photograph of him taken in 1918 when he was on the Italian front, showing a young Man in a straight military uniform, bright eyes and a handsome face. Another photograph of Hemingway, his second wife Pauline, and their children in a boat in 1935 with a marlin hanging from their backs, hemingway's face smiling brightly, was hemingway in middle age. The third photograph was taken by Hemingway during his time in Cuba, alone in the cabin of his own ship, named "Bilal" (taken from Pauline's nickname and the name of a major figure in his famous book, "For Whom the Death Knell Rings"). In the photo, Hemingway is obliquely facing the camera, a leisurely look, a beard on his face, white, this should be Hemingway in the fifties, in his life journey, has entered old age.

Different photos, different ages, different locations, one thing is the same, that is, the handsomeness that exudes from the body. It was an unstoppable handsomeness. In Paris in the early twenties, Hemingway's "godmother" when he first tried to write, and one of the founders of modern American literature, Gertrude Stein, was attracted to Hemingway's handsome appearance when he interacted with him. If you just rely on looks, it doesn't seem to last. Hemingway's handsomeness was inseparable from his behavior. He was a soldier, a master fisherman, and a warrior, and at least his actions told us the trajectory he left behind as a brave man. During World War II, he piloted the Bilal in search of German submarines in the Caribbean and said he would sink them if they were found, although it was later pointed out that it was nearly impossible to do so with his ship. Whether there is a show element in doing so may be discussed. Hemingway did, however, at the forefront of the war, taking part in the Allied landings in Normandy, and as a journalist he witnessed the sinking of landing soldiers in the sea in a row of waves, in a dense rain of bullets. To protect his life, he was not allowed to land. But then he appeared in the army that liberated Paris, commanding the militia and resistance fighters of a French village into Paris. There is a widely circulated theory that Hemingway was the first to enter Paris and was a pioneer in the liberation of Paris. It later proved to be a misinformation, but this at least shows that his heroic deeds have become stories, which may be one of the sources of Hemingway symbols as warriors. Whether it is a story or a deed, Hemingway's bravery is indeed praiseworthy. He went deep into the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, holding out in Madrid until the city was besieged, and was one of the last men to withdraw. During World War I, he signed up for the war, only to be brushed off because of unqualified vision, and later volunteered to join the ambulance team, became an ambulance driver, was wounded in Italy, and was awarded a medal for helping other soldiers escape from danger.

War and being a warrior is part of Hemingway's life. On the other hand, the so-called "part of life" also refers to the history of his emotional life, and the transformation of his four wives in his life is not unrelated to the war. Hemingway biographer James Melo once said, "For Hemingway, where there is war, there must be a woman." And Hemingway's good friend, Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby," also said that several of Hemingway's major novels are about women. To be precise, during the writing of The Sun Also Rises (which is related to World War I), Hemingway met his second wife Pauline; on the Spanish front he had a close relationship with his third wife, Martha, after which he wrote For Whom the Death Knell Was Sounded; in the late World War II, he met his last wife, Mary, and his 1950 work Crossing the River into the Forest, published in 1950, read on the title page: "With love, dedicated to Mary". The 1929 edition of Farewell to Weapons is based on the story of a lover he met during the war. Hemingway's emotional changeability naturally became the object of gossip, and while being talked about, Hemingway's machismo also surfaced. In the Italian battlefield, he fell in love with an American nurse who was seven years older than him, and the fiery love had to face the reality of breaking up after the war, and while suffering, Hemingway also secretly decided to abandon the other party before being abandoned. The story has since followed this line, but with the exception of her third wife, Martha, who was the only woman to leave Hemingway first, Martha, who was also a journalist and writer, really put Hemingway under pressure, a pressure from a woman competing with a man. He seemed to be born unable to withstand such a lifestyle.

Hemingway, who has loved sports since childhood, has an athlete-like body, coupled with a handsome appearance and soldier experience, which seems to be a perfect match for manhood. This is indispensable to Hemingway symbols. And the magical adventures he went through—in addition to his experience on the battlefield, but also hunting in Africa—and the resulting accidental injuries that caused his body to be traumatized, all of which gave him a strong tough guy color. In the early fifties, Hemingway and Mary were hunting in Africa, first in an airplane accident, fortunately there was no explosion, and they were killed, but their heads were concussed and their arms were injured; on the way to the hospital by another plane, they had another accident and almost burned to death. Two accidents occurred in succession, and both escaped death, which is really a miracle. Hemingway later read the news that he had died, and more interestingly, he was in a hurry to be interviewed, as if to try to show the fact that the immortal "Daddy" (Hemingway had this nickname when he was in Paris in the twenties). The miracles that happened to him in this way naturally further enhanced the image of Hemingway as a symbol. But behind this is hidden is the endless pain caused by the physical injury to him, and wrestling with those pains has become the content of his later life. And this is also cast into the spirit of "tough guys", making the symbols even more idols.

Perhaps, for Hemingway himself, it was the influence of his work that was more important. His unique "iceberg" theory and the resulting style made him famous in literary history. More notable, however, is the popularity of his work in the publishing market, where nearly all of his most important works have become bestsellers, a rare achievement in literary history as far as serious writers are concerned. The first edition of The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926, was printed in five thousand copies, rose to seven thousand copies two months later, and eight times two years later. "Farewell to The Weapon" became a bestseller as soon as it was published; "For Whom the Death Knell" was published in 1940, with half a million copies circulated within a few months; and "The Old Man and the Sea" was serialized in Life magazine, with five million copies circulated in two days. It's hard to say that Hemingway is the writer who gets the most money, but he is certainly one of the writers whose fame and fees are proportional to their writing fees. The popularity of Hemingway's works stems from his sensitivity to the times, not only that, but also importantly, he has a state of readiness at all times, from the atmosphere of the times, the changing society, the direction of the fate of the country, to the personal instantaneous life and death experience, the painful struggle, the collapse of the mental state, and the courage to face, which all emerge in his works when they need to be expressed, gushing out from between the lines. Here, it is useful to quote a Chinese Hemingway researcher to illustrate the reasons for the popularity of his works: "Hemingway's works are full of the pain of life, the ruthlessness of death, the cruelty of war, the stimulation of sex, the courage to see death as home, dedication to the cause, the resilience to persevere in despair, and beautiful natural scenery, firm friendship, pure love, etc." These and much more constitute Hemingway's picture of the daily lives of soldiers, hunters, bullfighters, fishermen, travelers, dreamers of love, alcoholics, those who face death, those who bear fear, those who have no hope in life, and those who are brave and hidden ninjas. Not only the performance, but more importantly, the depth of the bone marrow. The above-mentioned Hemingway journalist Merlot apparently realized Hemingway's "genius" as a writer: "The meticulous observation of nature (the world), the expression of the therapeutic dialogue of the characters, the accuracy of language, and the belief in this language, as far as a writer is concerned, this is the philosophy needed in the process of his artistic performance." "This is hemingway behind the symbol that we need to better know.

In Hemingway's case, such a philosophy manifests itself as a belief in the implicit role of language, the usefulness of the well-known "iceberg" theory. The following passage has been widely quoted by commentators as the source of the term "iceberg": "If a prose writer knows enough about what he writes, he may omit what he knows, and the reader will still have a strong feeling for those things, as if the writer has pointed out, if he is serious about writing." The solemnity of an iceberg is that only one-eighth of it is exposed to the water. This "omission" is based on respect for the reader, as if the reader and the author work together to create characters and scenes. But at the same time, it is also a respect for writing itself, and hemingway continues: "If a writer adopts the method of omission because he does not understand what he is writing, he is simply leaving a void in the work." If a writer, with little respect for the seriousness of writing, cannot wait to be known that he is formally educated, cultured, or educated, then he is nothing more than a parrot. The so-called "vacancy" does not only refer to meaningless omission, but also refers to the expression of "emptiness" (the original text is "hollow", which itself contains the meaning of "hollow"), in other words, does not directly refer to the depth of reality, and this is the "not serious" of writing (in the original text, the English of "serious" is "truly", which means "true"), that is, the real situation is not written, which is disrespect for writing. It can be seen from this that the image of "iceberg" is not only a style for Hemingway, but also an attitude, an attitude toward writing and life and the world. Behind the concise, silent, and unobtrusive narrative of language is an endless richness, a thorough portrayal of the characters and a comprehensive perspective of the self.

The pursuit of "truth" here is not limited to objective description, in general, "iceberg" writing gives people the feeling of being a description from an objective point of view, and from a narrative point of view, it is a third-person objective perspective to distinguish it from the third-person limited perspective, which is often seen from the perspective of the character, although it is used in the third person, but to a certain extent, limited to the perspective of a certain character, which means that the so-called omniscient and all-powerful third-person perspective partially disintegrates. This is a sign that writing began to turn to modern times. The third-person objective perspective used by Hemingway is used in the opposite way, hiding the perspective of the characters as a whole, even the perspective of the narrator, giving the reader the feeling that the story and the narrator are told, telling themselves, just like the original life photos taken. In fact, there are many commentators who use "photographic" descriptions to compare his way of writing. What makes "photography" stand up is the much-used dialogue in the description, a dialogue that hides the speaker's identity and conveys a recorded presentness, which constitutes a distinctive feature of the "objectivity" of Hemingway's work. However, what cannot be ignored is that behind this seemingly pure objectivity is the strong subjective cognition of the narrator and the author, although low-key, even vague, still deeply emotional, even moving, which is where the content under the "iceberg" is more than one-eighth. In Hemingway's own words, "The man in a novel must come from the experience that the writer has absorbed and digested, from his knowledge, from his mind, from his heart, from the author's whole body and mind." The digestion of the "heart" stems from the feelings of the whole body and mind. An illustrative example is one of his famous short stories, "Mountains like White Elephants," in which places, times, and characters appear in a fragment, where "photographic" dialogue takes up nearly half of the space, and the interpretation of the meaning of the novel seems to have been handed over to the reader for a task of excavation. However, after careful reading, it is not difficult to see the hidden perspective of the narrator and the sympathy for the heroine reflected behind it, which is a sympathy for understanding, but also a sympathy based on the ruthless dissection of the self. What we read from the novel's simple storyline is Hemingway's inner attitude toward women's complex attitudes and dialysis. This should perhaps be the requirement of what he calls "serious writing", and the essence of the "iceberg" style.

Hai's style made him have an almost pious attitude towards words, and it was a real thing to him, and it rose to the height of philosophical belief. The sun also rises by thirty pages, and although it can be said that he listened to Fitzgerald's advice, he probably would not have taken it seriously if it were not for the principles of writing that he had already begun to practice at that time. The ending of "Farewell to the Weapon" has been changed more than a dozen times, and again, it is also a portrayal of respecting the power of words. On the other hand, we must also see that words are not the result of concoction, words are closely related to life, and words are the blood of life. This is the charm behind Hemingway's writing, and this is not unrelated to the perfect combination of what he wrote with his own life experiences. The material of Hemingway's works is mostly taken from his own life and has a strong autobiographical color. His early love affair on the Battlefield in Italy became a source of inspiration, and in a story called "A Very Short Novel" (the title itself is very interesting, "short" means to briefly deal with the material of that love in this short story), his love affair is mentioned to the point, and then in "Farewell to the Weapon" becomes the core of the story. Autobiographical writing is actually a risky one, not only because one's life experience is limited, but it can also be controversial, especially for people like Hemingway who have the impulse to move their lives into the story. Despite this, he has adopted a face-to-face attitude, but this does not mean giving up the processing of art. Keen eyes, nuanced feelings, deep thoughts and, more importantly, a mind that thinks on his own, allow Hemingway to transcend autobiographical limitations and touch the pulse of the times.

Hemingway showed a clear political stance on the changing and trending of the times. He came to the front of the Spanish Civil War because of the need to expose the ideas and actions of fascism. On the other hand, as a writer, he transcends simple political prowess, and in For Whom the Death Knell Rings, a passage describing the killing of fascists through the mouth of a character shocks the reader with the extreme cruelty of war, while the novel exposes the extreme brutality of fascism in a similar way. This is not to achieve a balance, but to face the distortion and sadness of human nature under war. It is worth noting that in his pen, the only thing that can compete with war is the occurrence of love, which shows Hemingway's utopian idea of love, but even so, love can not escape the fate of destruction in the end. The love in this novel is like this, and the same is true of the previous "Farewell to weapons". Hemingway's sense of realism is evident here.

Destruction and death thus became a major theme in his works. Hovering in the face of death, fear hitting like a sea of mountains, how to overcome the fear of death has largely achieved the image of Hemingway's "tough guy" character. The hunter in Kilimanjaro's Snow is like this, and the image of Mr. McComber in Francis McComber's Short Happy Life illustrates the great difficulty of overcoming fear. "Tough guys" are not easy to do. Hemingway used his creative actions to try to prove that the spirit of the "tough guy" was embodied in himself. "The Old Man and the Sea" echoes the widely accepted statement of Hemingway Jiang Lang's exhaustion, saying that "man is not born to be defeated." A man can be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated" must have been hemingway's mind at the moment. On July 2, 1961, Hemingway ended his life with his beloved pistol at his Idaho rural home. After enduring the mental torture of physical pain and depression, he chose to face death in this way. Whether the "immortal father" is defeated or not can only be left to posterity to comment.

This article commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of Hemingway's death.

(The author is Deputy Director of the Center for American Studies, East China Normal University)