Topics for discussion

1. Account for the conflict between social standards of a real man and George’s love for painting.

2. Aldington’s individual style.

3. Irony in the text.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899 - 1961)

Born in Oak Park, Ill. son of a doctor (who would commit suicide), Ernest Hemingway never attended college but became a journalist for the Kansas City Star (1917-18). He served with the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in France (1917-18) and was wounded while accompanying the Italian army into battle. He worked as a journalist, covering the Greco-Turkish war for the Toronto Star (1920). In Chicago, Ernest Hemingway married and went back to Europe to serve as a foreign correspondent (1921-24). He made frequent trips to Spain and the Austrian Alps but for the most part was based in Paris where he fell in with the expatriate circle centered around Gertrude Stein. His first published work was Three Stories already his distinctive voice was in evidence--simple sentences, enigmatic dialogue, precise description. The Sun Also Rises (1926) gained him instant acclaim and seemed to capture what Stein labeled "the lost generation." Men Without Women (1927), another collection of stories, maintained his reputation, while his next novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), advanced him to the front ranks of contemporary writers.

Ernest Hemingway had a favorite expression: il faut d'abord durer. He used the saying in his private letters and on occasion inscribed the words in books he signed for friends. The saying (French in origin) roughly translates to "first, one must endure." He himself explained Iceberg Theory in the following way: "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water." ( Death In the Afternoon, Scribner's, 1932, Chap. 16, 192. )

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 for his "mastery of the art of modern narration," Hemingway used a spare and tight journalistic type of prose. He used the objective, detached point of view and his vocabulary and sentence structure are deceptively simple. He has written about failure, moral bankruptcy, death, deception, and sterility in the post World War I society. His "code-heroes" are characters with inner moral discipline who are usually involved with rituals like bullfighting, big-game hunting, and fishing.

ON THE AMERICAN DEAD IN SPAIN

The dead sleep cold in Spain tonight. Snow blows through the olive groves, sifting against the tree roots. Snow drifts over the mounds with the small headboards. (When there was time for headboards.) The olive trees are thin in the cold wind because their lower branches were once cut to cover tanks, and the dead sleep cold in the small hills above the Jarama River. It was cold that February when they died there and since then the dead have not noticed the changes of the seasons.

It is two years now since the Lincoln Battalion held for four and a half months along the heights of the Jarama, and the first American dead have been a part of the earth of Spain for a long time now.

The dead sleep cold in Spain tonight and they will sleep cold all this winter as the earth sleeps with them. But in the spring the rain will come to make the earth kind again. The wind will blow soft over the hills from the south. The black trees will come to life with small green leaves, and there will be blossoms on the apple trees along the Jarama River. This spring the dead will feel the earth beginning to live again.

For our dead are a part of the earth of Spain now and the earth of Spain can never die. Each winter it will seem to die and each spring it will come alive again. Our dead will live with it forever.

Just as the earth can never die, neither will those who have ever been free return to slavery. The peasants who work the earth where our dead lie know what these dead died for. There was time during the war for them to learn these things, and there is forever for them to remember them in.

Our dead live in the hearts and the minds of the Spanish peasants, of the Spanish workers, of all the good simple honest people who believed in and fought for the Spanish republic. And as long as our dead live in the Spanish earth, and they will live as long as the earth lives, no system of tyranny ever will prevail in Spain.

The fascists may spread over the land, blasting their way with weight of metal brought from other countries. They may advance aided by traitors and by cowards. They may destroy cities and villages and try to hold the people in slavery. But you cannot hold any people in slavery.

The Spanish people will rise again as they have always risen before against tyranny.

The dead do not need to rise. They are a part of the earth now and the earth can never be conquered. For the earth endureth forever. It will outlive all systems of tyranny.

Those who have entered it honourably, and no men ever entered earth more honourably than those who died in Spain, already have achieved immortality.

Notes

olive – In ancient Greece the olive was sacred to Athene ( the patron goddess of Athenes and patroness of art and crafts, the goddess of wisdom and subsequently identified with Minerva by the Romans), in allusion to the story that at the naming of Athens she presented it with an olive branch. It was the symbol of peace and fecundity, and brides wore or carried an olive garland, as British brides often do a wreath of orange blossom. A crown of wild olive was the highest distinction of a citizen who deserved well of his country, and was the highest prize in the Olympic Games.

the Jarama River – a small river in Spain

Lincoln – the 16th President of the USA (1861-65). The Civil War for keeping unity of the country and abolishing the slavery took place in that period of time (in his presidency).

the Lincoln Battalion – one of the international battalions of volunteers taking part in the Civil War in Spain (1936-39)

endureth – obsolete ending “th” of the 3rd person singular. The word here is used as an allusion to The Book of Ecclesiastes: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the Earth endureth forever… The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose… The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it wirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits… All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again”.