into the shallow water to drown:... ‘ Called for a Goya to depict them. Although, speaking literally, one can hardly say they called for a Goya, since there has only been one Goya, long dead, and it is extremely doubtful if these animals, were they able to call, would call for pictorial representation of their plight, but more likely would, if they were articulate, call for someone to alleviate their condition. ’ 17
The examples Hemingway selects for his ‘ field of observation ’ are all violent and bloody:
The first thing you found about the dead was that, hit quickly enough, they died like animals. ... I do not know, but most men die like animals, not men. 18
Speaking of natural death, he comments: ‘ So now I want to see the death of any so-called humanist ... and see the noble exits they make. ’
‘ The Natural History of the Dead ’ is Hemingway ’ s clearest exposition of his Existentialist position, and the key sentence, ‘ most men die like animals, not men ’ , is his answer to the humanist notion of the perfectibility of man. He cannot believe in the God of Bishop Butler ’ s or Paley ’ s arguments, because the idea looks thin against the raw facts of existence. The nearest approach to religious ideals in his work is the sentence ‘ He should find things he cannot lose ’ . This idea is not followed up, or rather, is followed up by a protracted demonstration that there is nothing that man cannot lose. This doesn ’ t mean that life is of no value; on the contrary, life is the only value; it is ideas that are valueless.
***
At first sight, Hemingway ’ s contribution to the Outsider would seem to be completely negative. Closer examination shows a great many positive qualities; there is honesty, and intense love of all natural things. The early work especially seems to be Hemingway ’ s own Recherche de Temps Perdu, and frequently the reader is picked up in a rush of excitement that the search is really leading somewhere. It is after 1930 that the direction seems to have been lost, the time of Hemingway ’ s great commercial success, when he had become a public figure and something of a legend. The stoicism of A Farewell to Arms should have led to something, and it didn ’ t. In none of the novels after 1929 do we feel ourselves in the hands of Hemingway the supremely great artist. And Hemingway the thinker, who had so far sifted and selected his material to form a pattern of belief, has disappeared almost entirely.
Perhaps Hemingway ’ s susceptibility to success is not entirely to blame. The problem is difficult enough. In the whole of L’ Etre et le N é ant Sartre says little more than Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. Subsequently, Sartre, for all his intellectual equipment, has failed to advance to a satisfyingly positive position. His philosophy of ‘ commitment ’ , which is only to say that, since all roads lead nowhere, it ’ s as well to choose any of them and throw all the energy into it, was anticipated by Hemingway in Henry ’ s finding that the feeling of unreality disappears as soon as he plunges into the fighting.
Compared with Sartre, neither Hemingway nor Camus is a penetrating thinker. Camus ’ s Mythe de Sisyphe enlarges on the conclusions of the last pages oi L’Etranger , and concludes that freedom can be most nearly realized facing death: a suicide or a condemned man can know it; for the living, active man it is almost an impossibility. In the later book, L’ Homme Revolt é , he studies the case of the revolt against society, in men like de Sade and Byron, and then examines the attempt of various social ideologies to realize the rebel ’ s ideal of freedom. It would be an impossibility to advance from LEtranger and Le Myth de Sisyphe to acceptance of a sociological answer to the problem of man ’ s freedom; and Camus faces this conclusion squarely at the end of L’ Homme Revolt é . In this matter he clashed violently with Sartre, whose theory of
The examples Hemingway selects for his ‘ field of observation ’ are all violent and bloody:
The first thing you found about the dead was that, hit quickly enough, they died like animals. ... I do not know, but most men die like animals, not men. 18
Speaking of natural death, he comments: ‘ So now I want to see the death of any so-called humanist ... and see the noble exits they make. ’
‘ The Natural History of the Dead ’ is Hemingway ’ s clearest exposition of his Existentialist position, and the key sentence, ‘ most men die like animals, not men ’ , is his answer to the humanist notion of the perfectibility of man. He cannot believe in the God of Bishop Butler ’ s or Paley ’ s arguments, because the idea looks thin against the raw facts of existence. The nearest approach to religious ideals in his work is the sentence ‘ He should find things he cannot lose ’ . This idea is not followed up, or rather, is followed up by a protracted demonstration that there is nothing that man cannot lose. This doesn ’ t mean that life is of no value; on the contrary, life is the only value; it is ideas that are valueless.
***
At first sight, Hemingway ’ s contribution to the Outsider would seem to be completely negative. Closer examination shows a great many positive qualities; there is honesty, and intense love of all natural things. The early work especially seems to be Hemingway ’ s own Recherche de Temps Perdu, and frequently the reader is picked up in a rush of excitement that the search is really leading somewhere. It is after 1930 that the direction seems to have been lost, the time of Hemingway ’ s great commercial success, when he had become a public figure and something of a legend. The stoicism of A Farewell to Arms should have led to something, and it didn ’ t. In none of the novels after 1929 do we feel ourselves in the hands of Hemingway the supremely great artist. And Hemingway the thinker, who had so far sifted and selected his material to form a pattern of belief, has disappeared almost entirely.
Perhaps Hemingway ’ s susceptibility to success is not entirely to blame. The problem is difficult enough. In the whole of L’ Etre et le N é ant Sartre says little more than Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. Subsequently, Sartre, for all his intellectual equipment, has failed to advance to a satisfyingly positive position. His philosophy of ‘ commitment ’ , which is only to say that, since all roads lead nowhere, it ’ s as well to choose any of them and throw all the energy into it, was anticipated by Hemingway in Henry ’ s finding that the feeling of unreality disappears as soon as he plunges into the fighting.
Compared with Sartre, neither Hemingway nor Camus is a penetrating thinker. Camus ’ s Mythe de Sisyphe enlarges on the conclusions of the last pages oi L’Etranger , and concludes that freedom can be most nearly realized facing death: a suicide or a condemned man can know it; for the living, active man it is almost an impossibility. In the later book, L’ Homme Revolt é , he studies the case of the revolt against society, in men like de Sade and Byron, and then examines the attempt of various social ideologies to realize the rebel ’ s ideal of freedom. It would be an impossibility to advance from LEtranger and Le Myth de Sisyphe to acceptance of a sociological answer to the problem of man ’ s freedom; and Camus faces this conclusion squarely at the end of L’ Homme Revolt é . In this matter he clashed violently with Sartre, whose theory of
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