I only know that what is moral is what you feel good after
and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Death in the Afternoon
Myopically focused on moral trivia, some critics have ignored
the larger issues of Hemingway’s work and his primary message:
carpe diem–tempus fugit. We must seize the day; time flies
and death is ever at hand. Overlooking the obscene moral
morass of modern warfare, critics have chosen to make judgments
on issues of language and sexuality while missing the wisdom
of Hemingway’s sensual focus. In this discussion, we will
briefly examine the novels that best demonstrate our points:
A Farewell to Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls.
Both novels include a backdrop of war and carnage that is
often overlooked, and both novels involve an intimate sexual
relationship that receives a disproportionate share of criticism.
Lastly, both novels celebrate the wisdom of sensuality–the
thoughtful enjoyment of all our senses in the face of inevitable,
approaching death.
The initial reaction to Farewell is a good starting
point for our discussion. Scott Donaldson tells us that “Max
Perkins was particularly concerned about the language of the
novel…was worried about the probable outrage of readers unaccustomed
to seeing such words in print." Donaldson goes on to summarize
the major complaints against Farewell: vulgar language,
sympathetic portrayal of an illicit love affair, graphic detail
of Catherine’s death, and insufficient condemnation of Frederic
for deserting the Italian army. This last complaint is a
classic example of the inverted moral priorities that are
often applied to these two novels. Western morality so enshrines
warfare and so denigrates sexuality that Frederic is judged
not for his participation in the atrocities of The Great War,
but for his abandonment of its insanity for a sensual relationship
with Catharine.
A basic familiarity with history will reveal the hideous
nature of World War I. The effects of mustard gas were so
terrible (blisters in the respiratory system, vomiting blood,
etc.) that the Geneva Convention was initiated, in part, to
outlaw such heinous weaponry. These facts were overlooked
by an “outraged gentleman from Maine" who compared Farewell
to a still life of souring milk, rotting vegetables, and moldy
bread. While this comparison may be interesting, full of
death and decay, it misses the point entirely. Intended to
condemn the language of the novel and denigrate its unashamed
sexuality, this complaint unconsciously touches on one of
Hemingway’s major themes–death. In light of the carnage of
war and the certainty of death, this condemnation of simple
sensuality can hardly be taken seriously.
Though most critics praised the novel, those who condemned
it focused on such trivial issues as coarse language, army
desertion, and the sexual behavior of an unmarried couple.
Even Scribner’s, in a careful statement defending Farewell
as a “distinctly moral" story, felt compelled to be dismissive
about the sensual nature of Frederic and Caherine’s love:
“a fine and faithful love, born, it is true, of physical desire."
This defense did little to thwart the plans of some censors
however. As is usually the case in issues of attempted censorship,
Boston’s police
chief Michael Crowley inadvertently promoted Scribner’s serialization
of the novel when he had it banned from the newsstands. Chicago
novelist Robert Herrick wrote about Farewell in a 1929
Bookman article entitled “What Is Dirt?" where he referred
to the sexual relationship between Frederic and Catherine
as an insignificant lustful indulgence comparable to the copulation
of animals. These early reactions are mirrored, though in
muted form, by modern critics of the novel. Few, it seems,
have the courage to applaud Frederic’s sensual persuasion.
Frederic muses: “I was not made to think. I was made to
eat. My God, yes. Eat and drink and sleep with Catherine."
William Wasserstrom, in a 1983 critique, dismisses this basic
sensual desire to enjoy food and sleep with Catherine: “That
may be occupation enough for a besotted lover but it’s not
signification enough for an ambitious novel." He goes on
to discuss the need for Catharine and Frederic to “sanctify
their affair" with a traditional marriage. In a refreshing
break from such shallow moral judgments, Bryant Mangum sees
that Hemingway’s characters act in accordance with “his belief
that the only things in life that one can know about with
certainty are those things that can be verified through the
senses…as Frederic can verify that being next to Catherine
feels good."
A long digression about the origin of dualistic morality
is not necessary to understand the skewed priorities with
which Hemingway’s novels are usually judged. We need look
no further than our Puritan forefathers to understand our
penchant to slander the sensual. Following in the footsteps
of the Mathers of Massachusetts, twentieth century critics
also overlook important moral issues and ignore the significant
biographical foundations for Hemingway’s message. Like the
Pharisees of Jesus’ day, we maximize minor issues, straining
out the moral “gnats" while swallowing the “camels." Sensuality
is not the problem–war is.
World War I affected Hemingway profoundly. According to
Sandra Whipple Spanier, “Hemingway spent nearly the entire
decade following the war writing about it." He was constantly
reminded of the immanence of death and the insanity of Western
moral priorities. Nearly being blown up at night at the Austrian
front, his father’s suicide, Harry Crosby’s suicide, and Fitzgerald’s
death are just a few of the real life experiences he had that
helped him develop a more practical set of moral priorities.
In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway hints at his own
war experience when a hospital orderly tries to decorate an
unwilling Frederic. “Tell me exactly what happened. Did
you do any heroic act?" To which Frederic replies, “No, I
was blown up while we were eating cheese." This answer is
amusing, but also revealing of Hemingway’s sensual morality.
Frederic Henry was more interested
in experiencing the cheese as one of the few (and possibly
last) pleasures of his wartime life than he was in having
his ego boosted with combat medals. Before this scene, we
learn that immediately after a shell explodes nearby, Frederic
asks what there is to eat. When the next shell comes a little
closer, Frederic and Gordini run for cover. Even when staring
into the grinning face of death, Hemingway’s characters revel
in their senses: “I was after him, holding the cheese, its
smooth surface covered with brick dust."
Death and the sensual experience of life are often juxtaposed
in Hemingway’s novels. After running for cover (cheese in
hand), Frederic and his fellow soldiers sit in their bunker
smoking, drinking wine and eating cheese, not allowing their
fear of death to cheat them of any pleasure. Discounting
the lists of sensory details provided by Hemingway, critics
like Wasserstrom feel that “none of these either singly or
collectively invite further evaluation," and thus miss the
point of the code. When the next shell hits their bunker,
Frederic gives an account of what is now called an NDE–near
death experience. Describing the sensation of rushing out
of his body, floating in the wind, and sliding back into his
physical form, Frederic’s description precludes the objections
by anti-sensualists that his morality is merely a material
hedonism. There is something of spirit in Frederic Henry
that often gets overlooked. It shows up here in his near
death, and it is portrayed later in his gradually increasing
devotion to the pregnant Catherine.
During their hotel rendezvous, Frederic quotes Marvell’s
famous lines: “But at my back I always hear / Times winged
chariot hurrying near," revealing his motivation. Catherine
realizes the brevity of life earliest in the novel when she
discusses her dead fiancée, but Frederic has his own realization
of impending death now. As the story progresses, Catherine
increases her appreciation of sensuality, and Frederic increases
his appreciation of spirituality. Though he feels “trapped
biologically" by his appetites, Frederic begins to realize
the religious nature of his love thanks to the balanced advice
of Count Greffi.
Spanier’s essay focuses on the heroism and growth of Catherine
while it maintains the inverted priorities that have traditionally
applied to the novel. Because of this Spanier, like many
critics, cannot acknowledge growth in Frederic much beyond
his early, lustful “chess game." The end of the novel betrays
their prejudice as Frederic grows in his love for Catherine
and even acknowledges her heroism and strength. He has developed
his sensual attraction into a spiritual devotion without giving
up either one. Both characters are heroic in their own ways.
The fact of Catherine’s death only serves to magnify the importance
of Frederic’s carpe diem morality and heighten the sadness
of the insane war in which they meet.
In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway has the same
message. Again, many critics miss the point. A. Robert Lee,
for example, while discussing a letter Hemingway wrote to
Max Perkins, overlooks the life and death emphasis of Hemingway’s
words to discourse on the credibility of Robert Jordan’s perspective.
In the letter, Hemingway points out that Jordan is lying in
the pine needles, experiencing the moment, in the beginning
and at the end of the story. Hemingway comments on how Jordan
really lives his life in the few days contained in
the novel and how his impending death brings him no fear.
Though Lee seems to miss this point, Jordan’s testimony is
credible because, like any of us, he must decide the best
way to spend his life before it is over. He is more credible
because he does respond, appropriately, to the reality of
death. He enjoys the moment, he savors sensual experience,
and he does his duty.
Although For Whom the Bell Tolls is similar in many
ways to Farewell, the later novel seems to have been
written with extra doses of realistic, some might say profane,
language, sensuality, and violence as if to highlight the
issues that readers and critics have consistently overlooked
or misjudged. While it is certainly true that Bell
came out when public standards had relaxed a bit since the
moral uproar caused by Farewell, the increased detail
given to expressions of lust and violence indicate that Hemingway
heightened the relief for those who didn’t get his message
the first time. There is little in Farewell to match
Pilar’s description in Bell of the killing of the civil
guard in the Spanish Civil War:
…they were shouting and clubbing and stabbing and men were
screaming as horses scream in a fire. And I saw the priest
with his skirts tucked up scrambling over a bench and those
after him were chopping at him with the sickles and the
reaping hooks…
If we are to take Hemingway as a serious artist, we can hardly
pass this description off as gratuitous violence inserted
because of relaxing standards. To contrast this barbarous
insanity, Hemingway also provides more graphic detail of the
sexual relationship between Robert Jordan and the beautiful,
nubile Maria:
He felt her trembling as he kissed her and he held the
length of her body tight to him and felt her breasts against
the chest through the two khaki shirts, he felt them small
and firm and he reached and undid the buttons on her shirt…
Imagine the paroxysms of condemnation that scenes like this
might have provoked from those who found the comparatively
mild Farewell too much for their taste. Frederic and
Catherine may have been considered “loose" for being sexual
outside of marriage, but at least Hemingway didn’t provide
the uncomfortable details!
Faith Pullin acknowledges, “What impresses the reader is
(not Jordan’s political or social awakening but) Hemingway’s
conviction that the only truth is in physical sensation,"
yet she dismisses these experiences as invalid. In her analysis
of the novel, Pullin feels obligated to mock the relationship
between Robert and Maria. Finding their sleeping bag intimacy
amusing, Pullin doubts the depth of Robert’s love. She does
not see the precarious balance he must strike between love
and duty; thus it appears to her that Robert’s love can be
“switched on and off at will." Pullin realizes Hemingway’s
emphasis on the sensual, but seems to miss its significance:
“What Hemingway seems to pursue in his writing is the physical
epiphany in which the ‘event’ is the sensation itself and
the people – if present at all – are merely part of the background."
This emphasis on “physical epiphany" is a major connection
between Farewell and Bell. As Hemingway prepares
us for an erotically charged scene between Jordan and Maria
(quoted above), he warms us up with a list of Jordan’s sensations.
Sensuality is not just about sex:
They were walking through the heather of the mountain meadow
and Robert Jordan felt the brushing of the heather
against his legs, felt the weight of his pistol in
its holster against his thigh, felt the sun on his
head, felt the breeze from the snow of the mountain
peaks cool in his back and, in his hand, he felt
the girl’s hand firm and strong, the fingers locked in his.
(italics mine)
Hemingway tells us that “all his life" Jordan would remember
the curve of Maria’s throat. This fate, however, is not tragic
because these three days are lived to the fullest, each sensation
noticed, appreciated, enjoyed. Robert and Maria make love,
and he is transported to a mystical “nowhere" (repeated eleven
times) reminiscent of the “little death" of orgasm, after
which he returns to an enjoyment of his other senses. The
word “nowhere" can also be read as “now here" a clever Hemingway
double entendre. The smell of the heather, the roots,
and the earth; the feel of sun and the scratchy sensations
on his shoulders are all completely appreciated by Robert
Jordan.
Like Frederic Henry, Jordan is fully engaged in his senses,
but Jordan seems to be more cognizant of the wisdom of this
choice. After considering his involvement in the Republican
cause and the ethical issues involved, Jordan ponders his
other responsibility: “But in the meantime all the life you
have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today,
tonight, tomorrow over and over again (I hope) he thought
and so you had better take what time there is and be very
thankful for it."
As Stephen Cooper notes, “Jordan accepts the price (of war)
not because he is callous, but because he is a realist who
wants to know how things really are." Unlike Frederic, Jordan
does not flee the tremendous burden of this responsibility,
but like Frederic he keeps his attention focused on the present
and his immediate experience. Cooper comments: “Throughout
the novel, he tries to avoid questions of belief and ideology
and not think about anything except his immediate duties and
responsibilities." Robert Jordan is more mature than Frederic,
but he never abandons the solid foundation of sensual experience
of the moment. Abandonment of this sensible code would be
a betrayal of his humanity.
Robert Jordan does not only look out for himself, however.
Mangum observes that Jordan represents a period in which “Hemingway
shifted away from what many consider the hedonistic value
system of Jake, Brett, Frederic, and Catherine…to a concern
with the collective, almost spiritual value of human life."
Jordan’s involvement with the guerillas brings discipline
and encouragement to their bare bones fight for freedom.
He is a middle class American who has given up a life of safety
and privilege to fight alongside Spanish peasants. He is
a fighter, but not without compassion. Though he is encouraged
to kill Pablo before he becomes a problem, Jordan delays until
Pablo does become a problem and even then Jordan does not
kill him. He lets Pablo live, forgives his betrayal, and
figures out ways to make use of Pablo’s talents for the cause.
Hemingway emphasizes carpe diem sensuality with the location
of the guerilla fighters. They are located, significantly,
in a cave – in the heart of the earth. This is no accident
as the earth is often associated with sensuality, both involving
chthonic overtones for a frightened humanity. For those who
are comfortable with the chthonic, as the partisans are with
their cave, there is no terror of the mysterious unknown.
However, part of our Western inability to appreciate and enjoy
the sensual is our fear of a Dionysian loss of control. The
Book of James tell us that earthly wisdom is “sensual and
devilish," so we are conditioned to fear it. We imagine a
safety in our Apollonian attempts at control that does not
exist in reality. All too often, these ways have brought
us the carnage of war that Hemingway uses so effectively as
a contrasting background to the balanced sensuality that his
characters enjoy.
When Maria is discussing her first sexual experience with
Robert, she says, “the earth moved" and upon being pressed
for details by Pilar, replies, “Truly, it was a thing I cannot
tell thee." This inability to describe the experience is
further evidence of the chthonic which connects Hemingway’s
sensual emphasis to early mystery cults. These ancient religions
focused on the experience of the individual and believed sexual
pleasure to be sacred. The “mystery" of mystery religions
was not that they were secret, but that, like Maria’s experience,
they could not be communicated
Robert Jordan casts his thoughts back to this ancient, chthonic
past when he considers:
Nobody knows what tribes we came from nor what our tribal
inheritance is nor what the mysteries were in the woods
wherethe people lived where we came from. All we know is
that we do not know. We know nothing about what happens
to us in the nights. When it happens in the day though,
it is something.
In his interior monologue, Jordan displays the wisdom of
Socrates and acknowledges that we cannot know what comes “in
the nights" but that what we experience in our day of life
is worthwhile. Our sensual experiences are our birthright
and our life rite. They are for our enjoyment and our healing.
As Lee notes, Maria’s fascist rape is “a past hurt healed
and redeemed through (her) present intimacy" with Robert Jordan.
Later in the story when he is discussing a snowstorm with
Pablo, Robert Jordan further identifies with the earth and
revels in his experience of her, “He was excited by this storm
as he was always by all storms. In a blizzard, a gale, a
sudden line squall, a tropical storm, or a summer thunder
shower in the mountains there was an excitement that came
to him from no other thing." Though his erotic experiences
with Maria are powerful, they are by no means the only powerful
sensuality he encounters.
As with Frederic Henry, Robert Jordan’s sensuality is a survival
mechanism that allows him to immerse himself in the moment
and temporarily escape the chaos he can never control. It
is Jordan’s attention to his present that leaves him able
to die peacefully and without fear.
Hemingway’s lust for life was something people found striking
about him; he lived the philosophy he espoused in his novels.
Live now. Enjoy now. Seize opportunity. Do not fear death.
Perhaps this is why, though some find it cowardly, Hemingway
was able to choose his own time of departure without fanfare
or fear. His legacy is one of exuberant life. A. E. Hotchner
remembers his first meeting with Ernest Hemingway:
Something about him hit me – enjoyment: God, I thought, how
he’s enjoying himself! I had never seen anyone with such
an aura of fun and well being. He radiated it and everyone
in the place responded.
Through A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell
Tolls, Hemingway tries to share with us all a basic, sensible
approach to life based on human experience. No fancy doctrines,
no ethereal theologies, just simple experience. If we can
see past conventional moral blinders we are more likely to
appreciate the message of Hemingway and see the value of a
life full of satisfying sensual experiences like Jordan and
Maria had:
Robert Jordan looked at Maria and shook his head. She
sat down by him and put her arm around his shoulder. Each
knew how the other felt and they sat there and Robert Jordan
ate the stew, taking time to appreciate the mushrooms completely,
and he drank the wine and they said nothing.
This message is more relevant now than ever before to citizens
of the nuclear, terrorist age.
Referring to the primitive air power used in the Spanish
Civil War, Augustin says to Pilar: “In this war there is an
idiocy without bounds." Imagine what he might say today in
our post-9/11 world. Certainly, Hemingway was right; we must
savor our moments while we have them, for we cannot forget
one thing: that Bell continues to toll…
August 2003
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