Reading Hemingway's Farewell to Arms

Kim Roos Michael

Description

Close analysis and commentary on Hemingway's great novel of love, war, and ideasIn this comprehensive guide, Lewis and Roos reveal how A Farewell to Arms represents a complex alchemy of Hemingway's personal experience as a Red Cross ambulance driver in 1918, his extensive historical research of a time period and terrain with which he was personally unfamiliar, and the impact of his vast reading in the great works of 19th-century fiction. Ultimately, Lewis and Roos assert, Hemingway's great novel is not simply a story of love and war, as most have concluded, but an intricate novel of ideas exploring the clash of reason and faith and deep questions of epistemology. The commentary also delves deeply into the roots of controversy surrounding the novel's treatment of gender issues through the characters of Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley. Catherine, they argue, is far more than an object of love; she is a real feminist heroine who is responsible for Frederic's maturation in developing a capacity for true love. Written in clear and accessible prose that will appeal to scholars and Hemingway neophytes alike, Reading Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is the most sweeping guide yet available to Hemingway's finest novel and contributes to a richer understanding of the writer's entire body of work.

Sujets

• Idioma inglés
• English
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 14 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781631013515
• Langue: English

Extrait

Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
READING HEMINGWAY SERIES
MARK CIRINO, EDITOR ROBERT W. LEWIS, FOUNDING EDITOR
Reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises H. R. Stoneback
Reading Hemingway’s Men Without Women Joseph M. Flora
Reading Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees Mark Cirino
Reading Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not Kirk Curnutt
Reading Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea Bickford Sylvester, Larry Grimes, and Peter L. Hays
Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms Robert W. Lewis and Michael Kim Roos
Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
GLOSSARY AND COMMENTARY
Robert W. Lewis and Michael Kim Roos

The Kent State University Press
KENT, OHIO
© 2019 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2018055020
ISBN 978-1-60635-376-9
Manufactured in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Lewis, Robert W. (Robert William), 1930- author. | Roos, Mike, 1952- author. Title: Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to arms : glossary and commentary / Robert W. Lewis and Michael Kim Roos.
Description: Kent, Ohio : The Kent State University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018055020 | ISBN 9781606353769 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961. Farewell to arms. | World War, 1914-1918--United States--Literature and the war.
Classification: LCC PS3515.E37 F35583 2019 | DDC 813/.52--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055020
23  22  21  20  19          5  4  3  2  1
For Robert W. Lewis (1930–2013)
To live reasonably is not to live by reason alone—the mistake is easy, and if carried far, disastrous—but to live in a way of which reason, a clear, full sense of the whole situation, would approve.
—I. A. Richards, Poetry and Science
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up”
It is true that there is a heaven for the saint, but the saint leaves enough misery here below to sadden him even before the throne of God.
—Emily Brontë, “The Butterfly”
Our deepest convictions—will Science upset them?
—Ernest Hemingway, “Banal Story”
Que sais-je?
—Montaigne
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Hemingway’s Anxiety of Influence
Abbreviations for the Works of Ernest Hemingway Used in This Book
Series Note
Front Matter
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Book Two
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Book Three
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Book Four
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Book Five
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Works Cited
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Illness prevented Robert W. Lewis from finishing the manuscript for Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms before he died, and we all feel the loss. The Reading Hemingway series was his brainchild, and he served as the founding editor, shepherding into print the first two volumes, H. R. Stoneback’s Reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Joseph Flora’s Reading Hemingway’s Men Without Women, volumes that set high standards for all the books to follow in the series. Regrettably, I never had the opportunity to meet Professor Lewis, but I am deeply grateful for his work in establishing this important series and providing a foundation for this manuscript upon which I have built. His daughter, Lisa Lewis, who has been generous, supportive, and kind throughout this process since Mark Cirino handed me the task of completing the manuscript in 2015, has told me her father would wish to acknowledge the able and invaluable assistance of Ursula Hovet, executive secretary of the English department at the University of North Dakota, who became Professor Lewis’s right hand in all Hemingway-affiliated administrative duties and provided helpful comments as she typed his manuscripts. My fervent wish throughout my work on this project has been to help preserve Robert W. Lewis’s important legacy and to produce a manuscript of which he would have been proud.
The completion of this project has been a collaboration far beyond the work of coauthors, however. I am deeply grateful to Series Editor Mark Cirino for having the confidence in me to take on the daunting task of completing a manuscript begun by such a luminary figure in Hemingway scholarship. Mark has been extraordinarily helpful and supportive throughout the three-year process of completing the book, and I have relied much on his wisdom and friendship. The Reading Hemingway Series is in excellent hands under his guidance.
I also greatly appreciate those, in addition to Mark, who have read previous versions of this manuscript, both Professor Lewis’s early work and my drafts: Steve Trout, Lisa Tyler, Kirk Curnutt, and Don Daiker. Their astute and generous comments have helped to make the finished manuscript significantly better.
Additionally, I have benefited greatly from the friendship and advice of numerous Hemingway colleagues—especially Don Daiker, John Beall, Elizabeth Lloyd-Kimbrel, Ai Ogasawara, Clint King, Susan Beegel, Kirk Curnutt, Suzanne del Gizzo, Ellen Andrews Knodt, Larry Grimes, Peter Hays, H. R. Stoneback, Kevin Maier, Mark Ott, and Verna Kale, all of whom have contributed in small and large ways to this volume.
During two separate weeks I spent at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, the staff—particularly Stephen Plotkin, Stacy Chandler, Maryrose Grossman, James De-Menna, Hilary Justice, and Susan Wrynn—provided congenial and professional assistance in reading and interpreting manuscript materials, scrapbooks, and letters, as well as in selecting appropriate photos for the book. The staff at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas—especially Kelly Kerbow Hudson, Richard Watson, and others whose names I have forgotten—provided equally friendly and valuable assistance during a week of research in the Hemingway family archives in Austin.
I have also received generous financial, scholarly, and emotional support for my Hemingway research from friends and colleagues at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College—Philip Luther, Marlene Miner, and Sue Sipple of the Department of English and Communications, Mark Otten of the Biology department (my consultant on scientific matters, especially those of evolutionary biology), Deborah Page of the foreign language department (my German translator), and deans Don O’Meara (a special friend) and Cady Short Thompson.
My son, Christopher Roos, and daughter-in-law, Kacy Hollenback, archeologists at Southern Methodist University, patiently provided valuable tutorial assistance in Adobe Illustrator, which I used to produce the five maps in the book.
Neuroscientist Olaf Blanke in Switzerland, cognitive scientist Glenn Carruthers in Australia, and psychologist Susan Blackmore in the United Kingdom contributed valuable expertise regarding Frederic Henry’s out-of-body experience. Vincenzo Di Nardo in Italy provided important information about the Abruzzi region and Hemingway’s friend Nick Nerone, as well as a possible source for the priest in the novel and found and translated some key Italian sources for me. An unexpected reward is that, as a result of our long-term contacts, Olaf and Vincenzo have now become my close friends and collaborators in spinoff projects.
I am also deeply grateful to the professional and supportive staff at Kent State University Press—Director Susan Wadsworth Booth, Acquiring Editor Will Underwood, Managing Editor Mary Young, Design and Production Manager Christine Brooks, Marketing and Sales Manager Richard Fugini, Marketing Associate Darryl Crosby, and my able and amiable copy editor, Erin Holman.
And finally I am deeply grateful for the friendship, bountiful love, and support of my wife and life partner, Minsun Kim Roos, who has been with me in body, mind, and spirit throughout the process, accompanying me twice on the fourteen-hour drive from Cincinnati to Boston for weeklong stints at the JFK Library, flying to Hemingway conferences in Venice and Paris, and tolerating the daily ups and downs of a long and arduous research and writing process. It is difficult to conceive how this project would have been completed without her.
M.K.R. August 2018
INTRODUCTION
Hemingway’s Anxiety of Influence
[S]elf-appropriation involves the immense anxieties of indebtedness, for what strong maker desires the realization that he has failed to create himself?
—Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence
The decade of the 1920s was Ernest Hemingway’s great period of self-education and self-appropriation, the time in which he grew from an apprentice to a master writer and, with the publication of A Farewell to Arms, joined an elite tier of novelists whose work continues to be read and esteemed nearly a century later. Upon graduating from high school in 1917, Hemingway momentously chose, against his parents’ wishes, not to attend college, pursuing instead a career in journalism at the Kansas City Star and then seeking the education of experience through the adventure of war. However, a near-death experience in that war in Italy and the heartbreak of his hospital romance with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky produced a marked change in his writing goals soon after his return home. Now with a rich vein of writing material to mine, no longer satisfied