Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
1. Life 2. Works 3. The Lost Generation 4. Hemingway's Code Hero 5. Writing Style "iceberg theory" 6. Selected Reading --A Clean, Well-Lighted Place 7. Themes
? Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 ? American author and journalist
1) Early Life
? Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. ? His father, Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, was a physician, and his mother, Grace HallHemingway, was a musician.
? Later Ernest Hemingway would say that he disliked his name, which he "associated with the naive, even foolish hero of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest".
? Like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist. ? The Kansas City Star as a cub reporter ? the Star's style guide: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative."
2) World War I
? In 1918, he signed as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy. ? First encounter with John Dos Passos. ? seriously wounded by mortar fire ? Italian Silver Medal of Bravery ? "When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you ... Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you."
Hemingway in Italy
? Abandoned by Agnes
von Kurowsky Biographer Jeffrey Meyers claims that Hemingway was devastated by Agnes' rejection, and he followed a pattern of abandoning a wife before she abandoned him in future relationships.
? In 1919, he began as a freelancer(自由记者), staff writer (特约撰稿人), and foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star Weekly. ? In Chicago he met novelist Sherwood Anderson and Hadley Richardson. "I knew she was the girl I was going to marry." Hadley was red-haired, with a "nurturing instinct", and eight years older than Hemingway. married on September 3, 1921
? "With Hadley, Hemingway achieved everything he had hoped for with Agnes: the love of a beautiful woman, a comfortable income, a life in Europe."
3) In Paris
? In Paris, Hemingway met writers such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound who "could help a young writer up the rungs of a career". The Hemingway of the early Paris years was a "tall, handsome, muscular, broad-shouldered, browneyed, rosy-cheeked, square-jawed, soft-voiced young man."
? In 1925 Hemingway met F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the pair formed a friendship of "admiration and hostility". Fitzgerald had published The Great Gatsby the same year: Hemingway read it, liked it, and decided his next work had to be a novel.
? The Sun Also Rises epitomized the post-war expatriate generation, received good reviews, and is "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work". Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation
being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever"; he believed the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost.
? Hemingway got divorced in January 1927, and married Pauline Pfeiffer in May. ? Pfeiffer, who was from a wealthy Catholic Arkansas family, had moved to Paris to work for Vogue magazine. Before their marriage Hemingway converted to Catholicism.
4) Spanish Civil War
? After Hemingway's divorce from Pauline was finalized, he and Martha Gellhorn were married November 20, 1940, in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
5) World War II
? In 1947 Hemingway was awarded a Bronze Star(青铜星章) for his bravery during World War II. He was recognized for his valor, having been "under fire in combat areas in order to obtain an accurate picture of conditions", with the commendation that "through his talent of expression, Mr. Hemingway enabled readers to obtain a vivid picture of the difficulties and triumphs of the front-line soldier and his organization in combat".
? Hemingway said he "was out of business as a writer" from 1942 to 1945. In 1946 he married Mary Welsh. ? He wroteThe Old Man and the Sea in eight weeks, saying that it was "the best I can write ever for all of my life". The novella made Hemingway an international celebrity, and won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1952.
? In October 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He modestly told the press that Carl Sandburg, Isak Dinesen and Bernard Berenson deserved the prize, but the prize money would be welcome.
Banquet Speech by Ernest Hemingway
? "Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."
? In the early morning hours of July 2, 1961, Hemingway "quite deliberately" shot himself with his favorite shotgun. ? His father, his sister Ursula and his brother Leicester also committed suicide.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
The Torrents of Spring (1926) The Sun Also Rises (1926) A Farewell to Arms (1929) To Have and Have Not (1937) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) Across the River and into the Trees (1950) The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Islands in the Stream (1970, posthumous) The Garden of Eden (1986, posthumous) True at First Light (1999, posthumous)
Non-fiction & short story collections
? Death in the Afternoon (1932) ? Green Hills of Africa (1935) ? Hemingway, The Wild Years (1962) ? A Moveable Feast (1964) ? Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923) ? In Our Time (1925) ? Men Without Women (1927) ? Winner Take Nothing (1933) ? The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938) ? The Essential Hemingway (1947) ? The Hemingway Reader (1953) ? The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1961)
3. Spokesman for the Lo
? The Lost Generation refers to, in general, the post-WWI generation, but specifically a group of expatriate disillusioned intellectuals and artists, who experimented on new modes of thought and expression by rebelling against former ideals and values and replacing them only by despair or a cynical hedonism(享乐主义).
? World War I seemed to have destroyed the idea that if you acted virtuously, good things would happen. Many good, young men went to war and died, or returned home either physically or mentally wounded (for most, both), and their faith in the moral guideposts(路标) that had earlier given them hope, were no longer valid...they were "Lost."
? The remark of Gertrude Stein, “You are all a lost generation, ”addressed to Hemingway, was used as an epigraph(题词，引语) to Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, which brilliantly describes those expatriates who had cut themselves off from their past in America in order to create new types of writing. The generation was “lost” in the sense that they were disillusioned with the war-wrecked world and spiritually alienated from a U.S. that seemed to be hopelessly provincial(偏狭的), materialistic, and emotional barren.
? The term embraces Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, E.E.Cummings, and many other writers who made Paris the center of their literary activities in the 1920s. ? They were basically expatriates who left America and formed a community of writers and artists in Paris, involved with other European novelists and poets in their experimentation on new modes of thought and expression.
? It is also called expatriate movement, or the second American Renaissance, is the most recognizable literary movement that gave rise to the 20th century American literature. Disillusioned and disgusted by the frivolous, greedy, and heedless way of life in America, many young men began to write and they wrote from their own experiences in the war. Among these young writers were the most prominent figures in American literature, especially in modern American literature.
? "Here was a new generation . . . dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. . . ." (from F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, 1920)
4. Hemingway's Code Hero “硬汉”
? It refers to some protagonists in Hemingway's works. In the general situation of Hemingway's novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos and man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. Those who survive and perhaps emerge victorious in the process of seeking to master the code with a set of principles such as honor, courage, endurance, wisdom, discipline and dignity are known as "the Hemingway code Hero".
5. Writing Style
? His style is probably the most widely imitated of any in the 20th century. ? He is generally known for his "mastery of the ar
t of modern narration." Hemingway himself once said,
"The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water ". Typical of this "iceberg" analogy is
? To behave well in the lonely, losing battle with life is to show "grace under pressure" and constitutes in itself a kind of victory, a theme clearly established in The Old Man and The Sea. Though life is but a losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity; man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually. Obviously, Hemingway's limited fictional world implies a much broader thematic pattern and serious philosophical concern. Hemingway Code Heroes plainly embody Hemingway's own values and view of life.
? Journalistic, lean, simple, short sentences; ? with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs ? Principle of iceberg(7/8 under for every 1/8 showing)—forces readers to "read between the lines"(体会言外之意); also called "hard-boiled"（不动感情的）style ? polished and tightly controlled, but highly suggestive and connotative ? no authorial comments ? economy of expression ? colloquialism
? According to Hemingway, good literary writing should be able to make readers feel the emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments, without conventionally emotive language, and with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs. Seemingly simple and natural, Hemingway's style is actually polished and tightly controlled, but highly suggestive and connotative.
? Besides, Hemingway develops the style of colloquialism initiated by Mark Twain. The accents and mannerisms of human speech are so well presented that the characters are full of flesh and blood and the use of short, simple and conventional words and sentences has an effect of clearness, terseness（言简意赅） and great care. This ruthless economy in his writing stands as a striking application of Mies van der Rohe's architectural maxim: "Less is more."
? While rendering vividly the outward physical events and sensations Hemingway expresses the meaning of the story and conveys the complex emotions of his characters with a considerable range and astonishing intensity of feeling.
? No wonder Hemingway was highly praised by the Nobel Prize Committee for "his powerful, style-forming mastery of the art of modern narration, as most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style"
Hemingway is the fifth American to win the literary honor. The others were in chronological order: Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, Pearl S. Buck and William Faulkner.
6. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
? Earnest Hemingway's short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place written in 1933 is a story of despair and loneliness. ? Unlike so many of
his other stories when his characters are reflected as heroes, this story is perhaps written on a more personal level that might give us some insight to the man that Hemingway really was.
? This story is about a lonely, but dignified older gentleman who basically has insomnia and can't sleep. He is not like other men who go to bodegas and bars. He does not go to party or to meet women. He goes to escape the darkness, and to have a drink. It is also mentioned in the story that he tried to kill himself, but was saved by his niece.
? James Joyce once remarked: "He [Hemingway] has reduced the veil between literature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have you read 'A Clean WellLighted Place'?...It is masterly. Indeed, it is one of the best short stories ever written..."
1) Life as nothingness Life is meaningless. Man lives in nada. Not everyone is aware of the nothingess.
2) The struggle to deal with despair How to cure the despair of nothingness? Religion, marriage, money, youth are vain. Suicide is the final choice. Light, cleaness, order, dignity can temporarily stave off the outside, overwhelming darkness, chaos and nothingness. ritualistic cafe-sitting Only routine is managable and preditcable.
? Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. With respect to the universe, existential nihilism posits that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence. According to the theory, each individual is an isolated being "thrown" into the universe, barred from knowing "why", yet compelled to invent meaning.
Nothing, or nothingness
This is exactly what the story is about: nothingness and the steps we take against it. When confronting a world that is meaningless, how is someone who has rejected all of the old values, someone who is now completely alone — how is that person supposed to face this barren world? How is that person able to avoid the darkness of nada, or nothingness?
? "It is all nothing that he knew too well. It was
all nothing and a man was nothing. It was only that and light . . . and a certain cleanness and order."
? Hemingway's real subject matter is the feeling of man's condition of nothingness — and not the nothingness itself. ? Neither of the old men is a passive victim. The old man has his dignity. And the old man does leave with dignity. This is not much — this aged scrap of human dignity — in the face of the human condition of nothingness, but, Hemingway is saying, sometimes it is all that we have.
? impetuous and has a wife that he loves, a warm bed to go to, and has time on his side ? Could not understand that an old, rich man tries to commit suicide over the despair of confronting nothingness
? unhurried because he has no one waiting for him ? has no place to go excep
t to his empty room. ? wiser, more tolerant, and more sensitive ? knows all about despair and fear
? The Café ? The shadow of the leaves of the tree
Questions: 1. How do you interpret the irony of the title after reading the story? 2. The older waiter said to the younger waiter:" We are of two different kinds." In what way do you think they are different?