ABC Hemingway for women

A new Hemingway book is available. Already last year, when his latest novel "Truth at Sunrise" was published in connection with the centenary, publishers and other parasites were criticized for preying on the almost mythological woman, fish and big game hunter. The book should be reported to the police, wrote Dagsavisen's reviewer.

It flows more, and it flows out. A bit feminine, really.

Myth and literature

"Oh, Dad can't you give her something so she stops screaming?"

Nick can't bear to watch when the baby comes out and his sheltered childhood is once and for all a laid-back step as the woman's husband during birth takes his own life. Well, Nick meets the adult brutal world several times in the other short stories, and almost every single time he retreats, or is forced to act responsibly against his will. The short story "Francis Macomber's Short and Happy Life" is not a Nick Adams story, but it reveals the same theme. Francis Macomber is with his wife in Africa and Macomber goes on a lion hunt with the experienced hunter Robert Wilson. Francis Macomber reveals himself time and again as a true coward, to his wife's great indignation. She goes so far as to lie with Wilson to humiliate her husband. Towards the end of the story, Macomber acquires unknown powers and overcomes the fear, and then is killed by his own wife who was trying to save him from a wounded lion. In the novel, we get the hint that the wife actually killed him on purpose, because she was afraid he would leave her with his new self.

Slipper-hunter

"I'll destroy you." David Bourne is warned at the beginning of the marriage, and the novel ends with the wife getting what she wants. She ruled with him in one and all. She even decides what kind of color to wear. One would almost think that David Bourne was born by 68er generation, slipper as he is.

Several examples could have been mentioned – the main character in "And the sun goes down" is impotent and spends most of the novel despairing that his great love, Brett, is out of reach precisely because of his lack of manhood – but the story is the same . Even in the "Old Man and the Sea" there is something wrong. The old fisherman has lost his grip, and the short novel (or the long story) ends with the big fish being eaten by sharks before the fisherman hits land.

Dress and long hair

If you go to the biography you will find as many almost mythological stories about Hemingway's missing hair on his chest as examples of his primeval forest. His mother gave him long hair and dressed him in dresses. He was tricked into playing American football, and for two years was beaten every single time in the shower. As a youth, he tried to enlist himself in the war, but was denied due to poor eyesight. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize, he did not attend Stockholm because he was allegedly too ill. The truth probably lies somewhere between that he did not like to wear tuxedos and that he was too shy in large assemblies. And the man never wore underwear!

Cinema AE Hotchner tells in the book "Papa Hemingway" about how the author in recent years had to be rescued from drowning in relatively shallow water, because he did not have enough energy anymore. There is only one episode. He did not get to fish, swim or exercise, and the man was not yet 60 years old. The years before he died also tell the story of repeated admissions and electronic shock therapy. The man suffered from delusions.

But this is a biography, and if one is to conclude something, it is probably just as correct to say that Hemingway as a macho repressed and feared his feminine sides that it had to go as it did because after all the boy was photographed with rifle at an age of five years.

As has been said, this has little to do with literature, although it is possible to trace just such a conflict as a thematic repeater: the fight against fear and cowardice. His love for nature was real, and is evident both in literature and in life. But here too, a clear paradox emerges, if one is to explore Hemingway's more vulnerable sides. There, when he wants to understand nature, animals, food and drink, he steps into the cliche and romantic swarm, as the male protagonist in the novel "Truth at Sunrise": Who knows the carrot feels, or the little radish, or the used the light bulb, or the worn-out gramophone record, or the apple tree in the winter? ". Ernie, or Papa, as the main character in the novel, actually speaks Spanish to a lion. It's not just pathetic. It is also contrary to Hemingway's own textbook that the feeling should be enclosed in the language, below or above the sentences, in the void of the dialogues.

A modern experience

In such a perspective, it is just as strange that Hemingway appeals to men as he does not appeal to women.

"You, fish," he said, "I love you and have a great respect for you. But I'm going to kill you by the day's over ”.

The question is whether it is possible to make a compromise between this text's slightly more feminine interpretation of Hemingway and the more ordinary masculine behavior that is often confused with his own filling stories. Perhaps it is in the unclear alternation between vulnerability and toughness, responsibility and indifference, the fear of the stranger and the love of the known, that the texts gain their strength. Perhaps Hemingway simply talks about the modern human experience; norm resolution, the individual trapped between nature and culture, identity and rootlessness, rationalism, pathos and mythology. It has nothing to do with being a man. On the contrary, it is about exposing oneself to the deepest feelings and the most embarrassing experiences. Yes, it's almost touching. It's no joke to be an impotent bohemian, like the I-person in "And the Sun Goes On".

A little cycling club

The guys are obviously attracted to Hemingway because of the myths, but the question is why do they keep reading Hemingway when literature does everything to undermine the myth? Maybe we will be deceived by the scarce and silent language, perhaps we will only glance to the bulls of Pamplona, ​​the watering holes in Paris, the trout in Northern Michigan and the quiet drama under the snow at Kilimanjaro. We only see the muscles, not the tears. That's why Hemingway screams for more female readers who are capable of appreciating the other halves, so we might as well soon get a biography capable of absorbing the nuances.

For men, Gunnar Larsen's translations are best suited. We like the concise sentences that in their nudity say more than a thousand pictures. It's like we did not say anything at all. At least we did not give a speech! The new translations of the Nick Adams stories are more lifelike and show a Hemingway that can actually write quite long sentences, and if the main characters do not give speeches, it is… a bit like a sewing club, although it may not be the right key word to attract more female readers to Hemingway.

Can we get everything?

"And we could have all this," she said. "And we could have anything, and every day that goes we make it more impossible."

"What did you say?"

"I said we could have everything."

"We can."

"No, we can't."

"We can travel wherever we want."

"No, we can't. It's not ours anymore. ”

"Of course it's ours."

"No, it is not. And when they first take it away, you never get it again. "

"But they haven't taken it away."

"Just wait and see."

Well, it's not just about abortion anyway, but radical – voluntary or involuntary – changes that force you to look at life with new eyes. Everyone benefits from this from time to time. Both those who give life and those who take life.