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История литературы / 40. Hemingway.Short stories

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Ernest Hemingway (1989-1964) was born in Illinois (the Midwest of the US) in 1899. After high school worked as a military newspaper reporter; went overseas to take part in the WWI; lived several years in Paris where joined a group of Americans who felt alienated from their country (“lost generation”). The times during which Hemingway lived were extraordinarily important to his writing. World War I changed the way that the world viewed itself. No longer could Americans and Europeans claim to be innocent and simply happy. They had seen, heard, and been ravaged by a horrible, destructive war. Further, an entire generation of young men had experienced the horrors of warfare. Hemingway seemed to pick up on the attitudes and troubles of these men and translated them successfully into fiction. In a historic sense, Hemingway expressed the feelings of his generation.

Hemingway was also one of the leaders of the modernist literary movement, which took place after World War I. Modernist writers, including Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, Marianne Moore, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and William Carlos Williams, often experimented with language. Hemingway did so by trimming the often excessive language of the nineteenth century into a spare, hard-edged prose. Modernist writers also emphasized being brutally honest about their subjects; Hemingway never sugarcoated his material. Finally, the modernist period is often argued to have a distinctly masculine bent (наклонности), which Hemingway certainly did. In 1954, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Thematically, Hem.’s stories either give an uninitiated char-r’s illumination into the trapping forces of reality, or show a char-r battling these forces in such a way as to gain dignity. The first sort of story is a preparation for the second. Given education into reality, a person can then take his measures to deal with it. The title of In Our Time may simply have been meant to indicate that the material is contemporary & to some extent representative of the early 20th с. experience. But Hem. delights in irony & in titles that are quotations. It is almost certain that he intended here an allusion to that phrase from the Book of Common Prayer: “Give peace in our time, o Lord”, for the stories are mainly of violence & evil in diff. forms. It is that there is no peace in them. In Our Time is the piece of writing that made Ernest Hemingway famous. He published this collection of short stories for the first time in 1925, to much praise. The collection revealed Hemingway's writing style, which was completely different from the florid, extravagant style of writing that preceded him. In Our Time, like all of Hemingway's writing, uses simple, declarative sentences with little or no description of emotion. But the words he used were full with emotions themselves. Through this spare style, Hemingway was able to weave powerful and moving stories. He was the master of the pause – the action of his stories continues during the silence when characters say nothing. This new use of language counted as one of the major developments in modernist literature. Hemingway's change of language was simple, but powerful. Many critics have even called his writing more masculine than nineteenth-century prose. His manner of writing belongs to classicism (contrast to romantic writers) – conveys emotions with few words. While In Our Time introduced Hemingway's revolutionary writing style, its content also made it famous. Many authors attempted to write about World War I, but until In Our Time, few had succeeded. Critics hailed this book as the first true analysis and depiction of the war. Hemingway's language helped the stories ring true, as did his powerful scenes and his often confusing narrative flow. The themes that Hemingway highlighted finally captured the spirit of the Great War. In the collection, he writes about masculinity (often in connection with battling and sport), relationships between men and women, bonding between members of the same sex, love, development and adaptation, maturity, and responsibility. The way that he weaves the themes together creates a portrait of Americans before, during, and after the war with which people seemed to identify. The stories about Nick Adams send him through a rite of passage. He learns as a young child about birth and death (in "Indian Camp"). Then his interactions with friends such as Bill and girlfriends such as Marjorie teach him about relationships. In "The Battler," Nick is on the road for the first time and encounters more information from an old fighter and his companion. Nothing prepares Nick for the war, though. That experience brings him back home in "Big Two-Hearted River" a more mature, grateful, and masculine man. Each of Nick’s contacts with real life in our time is in some way or other violent, evil, or disturbing in that he cannot find a ready-made answer to a problem he is facing. These episodes of Nick’s life have complicated, but damaged him; thus, when he is an ex-infantry (пехота) man, he’s already broken. He can’t sleep at night at all or has nightmares. His experience not only at war, but also in Michigan, has wounded him both psychologically & physically. Nick becomes indifferent to everything except freedom from work & the moment’s interest. Nothing matters, nothing happens. The composition of the book is also peculiar, it’s a reflection of the fragmentary perception of reality that was typical of the author & the “lost generation” he belonged to. There are 2 parallel lines in the book. The 14 stories alternate in the book with 16 short sketches (expressed in chapters) which are of contemporary scenes & for the most part are of sickening violence & death. Each chapter is comprised of a vignette (краткий эпизод) that in some way relates to the following short story. In the majority of cases these sketches, which are arranged acc. to the order in which the author experienced them, have no visible relation to the stories. (Indian Camp and Chapter I – way to first knowledge: Nick is going from darkness into the light of new experience and the man in the chapter does as well, he is going nearer and nearer to the place of the battle). What’s important in the actual stories is not the action as such, but, rather, the author’s attitude to the inner state of his chat-rs. The stories are arranged in such order as to help us understand the ironic contrast btw. the seemingly peaceful times & their dreadful true essence seen only by a man in the war. Fatherhood The idea of fatherhood emerges in several places throughout In Our Time. In "Indian Camp," Nick's father teaches him about childbirth and tries to answer Nick's questions about death. The father’s figure is distanced from Nick, and many of the things he tells him do not make any sense to the young boy. The preoccupation with Nick's father shows how the complex relationship between father and son as well as how difficult true communication is between a man with so much experience and boy with so much innocence. This theme also arises in "My Old Man," although the narrator starts losing much of his youthful innocence towards the end of the story. (Nick finally chooses his father, not his mother: two parents – two “religions”, i.e. views on life) The Problem of Relationships One of Hemingway's major concerns is failed marriage. Many of his stories deal with unhappy couples and the difficulties they face. In "The End of Something" Nick's and Marjorie's relationship ends abruptly, but even while they are still together they tend towards conflict. In "Three-Day Blow" Nick and George discuss the dangers of relationships. For George it threatens a man's very independence. Youth The youth of any nation always plays a part in its wars, and given that In Our Time concerns itself so frequently, if often indirectly, with war, it is not surprising that the theme of youthful innocence often arises in several stories. In "Indian Camp" the story ends on Nick's firm belief that he will never die. In "Cross -Country Snow," Nick and George talk together on a ski trip, and there are only slight traces of Nick's youth left behind. His attitude has turned much more cynical, like when he notes the fruitlessness of making a promise to ski again in the future. In "The Battler" the boy narrator slowly learns about the cruel and cynical world, and his final thought is one that suggests a turn away from his youthful innocence. Death Death plays a prominent role from the very beginning of In Our Time. In "The Quai At Smyrna" the English naval officer remembers the horrors of war; mothers would not give up their dead babies. In "Indian Camp" the father of the newborn baby commits suicide, presumably from the torture of listening to his wife's screams (death and birth at the same moment). Death represents a dark side, but it always illuminates the youthful Nick. Such is the complicated role of death here. Throughout the bullfighting vignettes, death is celebrated as a type of victory. Whenever a bull is killed the matador is hailed as the victor. When a matador is killed they just replace him with someone new. This is very similar to war, where soldiers die and then are replaced by more soldiers. When soldiers on one side die, the enemy claims it as a victory, even though both sides are part of the same race. Loss The theme of loss arises continually, usually in conjunction with a preoccupation with the passage of time. In "Three-Day Blow" Nick fears the finality of his breakup with Marjorie, but when he realizes getting back together with her is a possibility he feels a renewed sense of hope. Yet there are many things lost that are not reversible, despite his feelings in that moment that nothing is lost forever. Fishing and Skiing and drinking alcohol (+smoking and having random sexual relations) Fishing, skiing, etc. activities dominate many of the stories. They represent an escape from the problems of society and of personal relationships. In "The End of Something" Nick and Marjorie are able to exist together as they fish for trout, but once they sit by the fire they end their relationship. In “Three days Blow” Nick and George discuss the problem of relations with the opposite sex and coming to no definite conclusion decide to drink whisky just to forget about the problem. In "Cross-Country Snow" skiing allows Nick and George to escape from the realities of their lives: George's education, and Nick's impending (нависающий) fatherhood. At George's suggestion that they may never go skiing again, Nick replies, "We've got to," as if their happiness depends upon it. In the story "Big Two Hearted River: Part II," fishing isolates Nick from society. He likes fishing on his own, much because he sees other fishers as a destructive force in nature. The details of fishing dominate the chapter and provide Nick with a way of escaping the mechanics of society. Hemingway’s genius as an American original was evident long before he produced his novels that are today considered masterpieces of American literature. Both critics and readers have hailed his short stories as proof that a pure, true American literature was finally possible. American literature was no longer merely compared with British. American literature had at last come into its own. Hemingway set the standard—and the writers who came after him honored his achievement.