Ernest Miller Hemingway – author, adventurer, storyteller, raconteur, bull fighter, war correspondent and all-round macho man was undisputedly one of the leading lights of English literature, or more specifically, American English literature in the early 20th century. Arguably the greatest of American novelists, many of his works are considered classics of literature. He was a man’s man. He was prolific. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two works of non-fiction in his lifetime. Three novels, four collections of short stories and three works of non-fiction were published posthumously.
Hemingway was a master of narrative. His debut novel “The Sun Also Rises” was published in 1926; “A Farewell to Arms” came out in 1929 and “To Have and Have Not” in 1937 – each one getting him greater attention, recognition and fame. But his most outstanding work, “The Old Man and The Sea”, came out in 1952 and became an instant success. The novel bagged him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. The Nobel Prize for Literature was conferred on him in 1954.
The Nobel citation highlighted “his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” To say that Hemingway’s style was revolutionary is an understatement. Compared to pre-World War I writing, defined by its elaborateness and ornamentation, his prose was lean and “athletic”, engagingly simple yet deeply empathetic. His use of linguistic styles from languages such as Spanish and his esoteric theme selection were to change for contemporary times the understanding of prose writing in general and the novel in particular.
As one critic Beegel wrote, “Throughout his remarkable body of fiction, he tells the truth about human fear, guilt, betrayal, violence, cruelty, drunkenness, hunger, greed, apathy, ecstasy, tenderness, love and lust.”
Hemingway revelled in the use of simple syntax and “static sentences”, simple sentences with no subordinating conjunctions, as a reaction to pre-War writings, which he believed were “used up words”. His scientific and clinical style did not eliminate emotions, it just portrayed them as sequences of motions and facts that created them, rather than describing them through words. His self-allocated title of the “Iceberg Theory” to describe his writing kept the narration limited to chosen facts that are narrated (above the surface) to allow structure and symbolism to operate out of sight (below the surface).
What background would raise an iconoclast of such lasting impact? Hemingway was brought up in a large family with a fondness for the outdoors inbuilt in his DNA. But with toughness and resilience to the elements, Hemingway also inherited the “Celtic Curse”, i.e. hemochromatosis, a rare disorder causing severe pain, suffering and depression as well as a suicidal streak – his father, grandfather, brother, sister, and even granddaughter all killed themselves. Hemingway was sentenced at birth to develop a brooding and ruminating disposition, intermingled with the capacity for great physical action.
His preference in the opposite sex, older and usually journalists like himself, saw him marry four times, while retaining a propensity for womanising; one could argue his raptures kept him grounded and grave, rather than free-spirited and vivacious, supplementing the symptoms he was born with. War remained a faithful mistress to him, seeing him as an ambulance driver during the First World War, a journalist during the Spanish Civil War as well as ensuring his presence at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. His thinking, theme selection and style all bore hallmarks of these influences.
Hemingway’s passionate propensity to remain close to wilderness and nature were reflected both in his living style, his innate tendencies and even in the choice of his residences. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida (in the 1930s) and in Cuba (in the 1940s and 1950s). In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho where, in mid-1961, he committed suicide.
His suicide, using the same gun as his father had, was undoubtedly the result of several years of excess, trauma and illness. As American psychiatrist Christopher D. Martin said “The accumulating factors contributing to Hemingway’s burden of illness at the end of his life are staggering.” He included bipolar mood disorders, chronic alcoholism, depression, repetitive traumatic brain injuries and the onset of psychosis among Hemingway’s list of maladies. But his suicide was precipitated and made inevitable by his discovery of his inability to write. As he tearfully told his lifelong friend and biographer, A.E. Hotchner, on discovering that he could not contribute a single sentence to a presentation volume for JFK’s inauguration, “It just won’t come any more.”
John Walsh, his best-known biographer, observed how his fading capacity to write words was replaced by a deepening depression, and concluded that “Building and sustaining the image of ‘Hemingway the Man’s Man’ took courage and determination, but it was something he needed to do – and when it dwindled, along with the all-important capacity to write, he had no answer except to go the same way as his father.”
Many may believe that a vice-ridden lifestyle ruefully led to his tragic and untimely exit. But among the young and impressionable of his times and of the generation immediately following his, it evoked passionate fascination and envious adulation, perhaps occasional disapproval but rarely disgust and never disinterest. His literary genius and his imprint on American prose-writing remains as lasting and impactful to equal and at times excel the works of any other all-time great.
Hemingway’s treatment of life and vice-versa, in a large measure, embodies plain, stark, cruel realities of life so closely seen during his war days. They are stated with objective bluntness, uncommon but not unreal. This oft-repeated quote from his novel ‘Farewell to Arms”, epitomises his conclusions rather mercilessly.
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
At the pedestal of his Memorial in Sun Valley, one will find the following inscription written by him as a eulogy for one of his friends many decades ago:
“Best of all he loved the fall
the leaves yellow on cottonwoods
leaves floating on trout streams
and above the hills
the high blue windless skies
…Now he will be a part of them forever.”
Farewell, Ernest Miller Hemingway, man’s man and author extraordinaire!
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