Hemingway (Part 2)

foreign Also Rises Jake Barnes has much to identify him with Hemingway he is a writer living in Paris in the 20s he was a Midwestern American who fought the austrians on the Italian front and he spent a good deal of his time drinking in cafes fishing or watching bull fights the novel is developed against backgrounds simply described but with such accuracy they become a part of experience the dialogue flows so easily that the reader often feels I could have written this book but it's put together with a Precision of a watch and every part meshes perfectly all driven by a mainspring of inevitability The Sun Also Rises I started in Valencia on my 25th birthday everybody my age had written a novel and I was still having trouble with a paragraph I wrote All Through The Fairy I went on to Madrid and wrote there it finally got too hot and we went to Hyundai I worked very well there and then we went up to Paris and finished the first draft in the apartment over the sawmill six weeks from the day I started it the climax of The Sun Also Rises takes place during the Festival of San famine and tampona where my tradition the Bulls are run through the streets of the town in 1923 Hemingway covered this event for the Toronto stars and Pamplona high up in the hills of Navarre is held each year the world series of bullfighting [Applause] all the carnivals I had ever seen paled in comparison [Music] all night long the wild music kept up in the street Boulevard men blue shirted bare-headed and whirling and clothing in a wild fantastic dance down the street behind the rolling drums and shrill pipes [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it was five o'clock in the morning I'm far away there was a dull report and they're off everybody shy what is it I asked man next to me who's leaning far out of the concrete rail oh came in sight eight Bulls Galloping along listening Sinister their horns bear tossing their heads and in a solid Mass and ahead of them sprinted for Iran both in the rear guard of men and boys [Applause] this has been going on each year since a couple of hundred years before Columbus had his historic interview with Queen Isabella and the town outside the spectacle of the bull fight affected Hemingway so deeply he was to become one of the world's authorities on the subject death in the afternoon his book on bull fighting is the definitive work in the English language but here are some excerpts from his dispatches to the Toronto Star the films of Hemingway were taken in 1959 but the words are from his first written account of the first bull fight he ever saw [Music] in the front rank walked with three espadas or Toreros who have charge of the killing the six fools of the afternoon behind them and after your first bullfight you do not look at their costumes but their faces much the teams are quadrias the bullfighters march across the sand in March with easy professional strides bringing along with the grace and slight slouch of the professional athlete [Music] [Applause] [Music] the big gate was shut and bolted there was no more entrance the ring was complete the crowd had been shouting and yelling now it was dead silent [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] exceedingly dangerous occupation in 16 fights I saw there were only two in which there was no one badly hurt [Applause] apologize for bull fighting survival days of the Roman Coliseum but it does need some explanation he was never supposed to be it is a tragedy a very good it is played in three definite Acts first the entry of the bull when the picadors received a shot of his attack and attempt to protect their horses with their lances second act is defining the vendor ES three-fourth daily colored Dodge with a bishop prong at the end the band of the arrow walks out into the arena alone with a bull the bull charges in the band of the Euro Rises to his toes bends on a curved four with Injustice the ball is about to hit him drops the darts into the Bulls hump just back of his horns [Applause] which is most formal and can only be brought about in one way directly from the front by the Matador before killing him however he must first do a series of passes with the moleta he's a red cloth he carries about the size of a large napkin with the moletto the torreirum shows complete Mastery of the ball must make the bull miss him again and again by inches before he is allowed to kill him [Applause] everybody [Applause] must receive the ball in full charge and kill him with a sword thrust between the shoulders just back at the neck and between the horse [Applause] in the Final Act it is incredible [Music] there are no drawn battles [Music] from 1923 on Spain was the foreign country in which Hemingway felt most at home during the 13 years after that first fair at Pamplona he spent much time following the bullfights fishing for trout in the Pyrenees wandering the bear and somber Landscapes of the guadarama mountains and riding in the compatible atmosphere of Spain The Sun Also Rises death in the afternoon and some of his best short stories were written there when the Spanish Civil War began in 1936 Hemingway found himself a deeply committed anti-communist partisan on the loyalist side he gave forty thousand dollars of his own money to buy ambulances and established headquarters at the Florida hotel in Madrid which was under frequent bombardment [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] the most active combat areas for the North American newspaper Alliance his salary of 500 a week was donated to the loyalists Hemingway despised fascism from his first glimpse of it when he had interviewed Mussolini in 1923. he conceived a rapid hatred forth in his Italian and German varieties when he saw the armies and Air Forces of those two countries testing their war machines on the Spaniards to whom he was the most loyal friend [Music] you grow accustomed to war but no one becomes accustomed to murder and murder on a large scale we saw every day for 19 days the totalitarian fascist States believe in a totalitarian War that simply means whenever they are beaten by Armed Forces they take their revenge on unarmed civilians if I described it it might make you hate but we do not want hate we want a reasoned understanding of the criminality of fascism and how it should be opposed we must realize that these murders are the gestures of a bully there is only one way to quell a bully and that is to thrash him and the bully of fascism is being beaten now in Spain as Napoleon was beaten in the same Peninsula 130 years ago Hemingway had a remarkable vision of the probable course of the events of the next decade and expressed it with Clarity but not enough people listened have you read Hitler's speech if you have you know there's going to be a war one thing can delay it if Hitler loses confidence in his allies the way to avoid the world war is to end it where it has begun in Spain by Smashing World fascism's weakest link the beautiful Italian military machine [Applause] if Italy could be beaten in Spain as Napoleon was beaten there the Berlin Rome Tokyo axes would be broken before it ever had a chance to make the war threatens those were excerpts from articles written from the Florida hotel the early part of 1938. it was also in the Florida hotel that Hemingway wrote his only play the fifth column it was an effort to make the true facts of the war in Spain alive to the rest of the world each day we were shelled and while I was writing to play the hotel Floridan where we lived and worked was struck by more than 30 high explosive ships though if it is not a good play perhaps that is what is the matter with it if it is a good play perhaps those 30 some shells helped write it Hemingway was seldom out of the range of enemy guns and aircraft he was a scholar on the subject of war and he increased his knowledge the hard way when a man goes to seek the truth in war he may find Death instead but if 12 go and only two come back the truth they bring will be the truth not the gobble hearsay that will pass his history [Music] out of his admiration and deep affection for the Spanish people and his hatred for fascism and out of his knowledge of the war and the lives of its participants Hemingway wrote a superb novel For Whom the Bell Tolls in this book The Hero Robert Jordan again a hero with many points of identification with Hemingway feels about the war as Hemingway did at the end of the novel Jordan wounded and resigned to death Ames his automatic rifle toward the Italian Invaders preparing to fire if we win here we will win everywhere The World Is A Fine Place worth the Fighting For and I hate very much to leave it then he looked up at the sky with big white clouds in it he touched the palm of his hand against the pine needles when he lay and he touched the bark of the pine trunk that he lay behind then he rested as easily as he could with his two elbows on the pine needles and the muzzle of the submachine gun resting against the trunk of the pine tree [Music] in this book Hemingway's superlative skill as a writer is evident on every page his dialogue is so true that in English he makes the rhythms of Spanish absolutely natural every character is a real and solid person fulfilling a genuine function in a real and solid world but the most important thing about this book is something else it is the first time Hemingway or his hero follows a cause bigger than the desire for experience the hero has become a fighter for people weaker than himself the title of the book comes from one of the most perfect passages in literature it's by John Dunn we quote it in part no man is an island and tire of itself every man is a piece of a continent part of a Maine any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind and therefore never stand to know For Whom the Bell Tolls it tolls for the in 1933 Hemingway made an extended Safari into Africa and emerged with some fine heads and skins of animals but the most important trophies were the books about his experiences on the Safari the Green Hills of Africa and two of the best short stories in American literature The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and the Snows of Kilimanjaro the hunting of big game was one of Hemingway's greatest Pleasures he was proud of the accuracy of his shooting the endurance which made it possible for him to hike the steepest or the rockiest or the muddiest terrains from sunrise to dark and more than anything else his nervousness in the face of danger nature provided facilities for these talents with great abundance in Africa the planes were alive with games hunting gave point and zest to Hemingway's life it provided a first-hand face-to-face opportunity to live by the code Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered Mountain 19710 feet high and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa this Western Summit is called the mustang guy the house of God close to the Western cemet there is the dried and Frozen carcass of a leopard no one has explained what the leopard was doing at that altitude that is the beginning of the Snows of Kilimanjaro discipline is the spine of a writer's life this story of a writer's default was written at a time when Hemingway was deeply concerned over his own breaches of work discipline the leopard might represent a try for immortality he got high enough to reach the Eternal snow and in that icy place he will never spoil Harry the writer Below on the plane dying of the gangrene of his rotting leg sold out he never made his bid for immortality uh [Music] a writer should be of his great property as a priest of God he is either honest or not as a woman is chaste or not and after one piece of dishonest writing he is never the same again [Music] foreign and how Hemingway had predicted some years earlier it would and he was in it free swinging commanding heavily bearded and paternal he was only 42 but he was already Papa he had been for some time he was by then well recognized as one of the world's great authors and also something of an authority on War [Music] foreign I have seen much war in my lifetime and I hate it profoundly there are worse things in war and all of them come with defeat the more you hate War the more you know that once you are forced into it for whatever reason it may be you have to win it you have to win it and get rid of the people that made it and see it at this time it may never come to us again he got himself accredited to the Royal Air Force as a correspondent he flew a number of missions and then he was attached in Rapid succession to the third Army an American Pursuit Squadron in France and the fourth infantry division where he shared the lives of the gis of the 22nd Infantry Regiment foreign was in a constant series of battles Climax by one in hicken Forest that lasted nearly three weeks two out of every three men were casualties Hemingway stayed with the regiment during this entire action but the war really became his kind of War when he commandeered a Jeep and shooting ahead of the entire Allied army established contact with French Guerrilla Fighters on an armored column started toward Paris Hemingway by his knowledge of military strategy knew they would encounter German resistance on the way so he went through the back roads with a force of 200 men and was fighting at the Arctic Trio while the assembled armies were still on the outskirts of Paris [Music] Venice is the scene of Hemingway's next book from all he knew of the second world war from a composite of all his experience came across the river and into the trees the hero is a badly beat up professional soldier of 50 years who like Hemingway had fought to defend Venice from the austrians at posalta when he was 19. when he was Nick Adams just become Lieutenant Frederick Henry now he is Colonel Cantwell on leave in Venice we are coming into my town it is my City because I fought for it when I was aboard and now that I am a half a hundred years old they know I fought for it and I am a part owner they treat me well [Music] um the colonel is closer to Hemingway than any of his other Heroes down to details down to the loss of his right kneecap at for Salter here's a unique combination of toughness and tenderness a man in love with a girl 30 years younger than he [Music] sensual descriptions of Venice the food the wines and the love is beautiful and aristocratic girl this is the least successful book Hemingway wrote critics jumped all over it the book can only distress anyone who admires Hemingway another said it is not only Hemingway's worst novel it is a synthesis of everything that is bad in his previous work it throws a doubtful light on the future nothing happens they said sure they can say anything about nothing happened [Music] through a Normandy The Taking of Paris and the destruction of the 22nd infantry regimen in Hurricane Forest plus a man who loves a girl and dies only it is all done with three cushion shots writing I move through arithmetic through plain geometry in algebra and now I'm in calculus if they don't understand that to hell with them Hemingway angry was a great competitor the critics surely had heard him although he wouldn't admit it and he was going to defend himself the way he had to it is sort of fun to be 50 and feel you're going to defend the title again I want it in the 20s and defended it in the 30s and 40s I don't mind at all defending it in the 50s he defended his title by writing another novel this time the critics said The Old Man and the Sea is destined to become a classic in its time another said when the Top Line cut the old man's hands and the son pounded on his skull my hands hurt and my head ate they went on to say the book is as faultless as any short novel of our times it needs no interpretation and stands as it is beautiful and glorious with the Majesty of man the book won him both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes he was champ again who the hell wants Fame over a weekend [Music] all I want is to write well [Music] he had been living for some years in Cuba at thinkaviga Lookout Farm in a state of 15 Acres with Gardens Tennis Courts and a swimming pool an easy-going establishment in spite of its staff of more than a half dozen servants here's the living legend the handsome head photographed with the world celebrities the Sportsman we have seen standing by the giant fish the Fallen lion here is the expert skier Soldier the man who never got past high school but spoke French Spanish and Italian fluently here is a naturalist a navigator an authority on bullfighting and unboxing here is a man who's thought the most dangerous conditions the world could offer but who Could Be Shaken by the sight of a black cat and who hated to travel on Friday this unique man this aggregate of powerful appetites Justified his existence on earth when he climbed these stairs and went through this door for this is where he sculpted with words the living human beings in a solid real and tangible world this is where he was a creator when I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light is possible there is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write you write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again you have started at six in the morning say and may go on until noon or maybe through before that when you stop you are as empty and at the same time never empty but filling as when you have made love to someone you love staying in the world to do is to write straight honest Pros on human beings first you have to know the subject and you have to learn how to write both take a lifetime to learn I use the oldest words in the English language I know the Ten Dollar Words but there are older and better Words which if you arrange them in proper combination you make it stick a writer can be compared to a well there are as many kinds of Wells as there are writers the important thing is to have good water in the well and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill the country that a novelist writes about is the country he knows and the country that he knows is in his heart once writing has become your major Vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]