After a lot of books, two plane crashes and four wives, white-bearded Papa becomes one of the most famous persons in the world. He is remembered more as a great person and less as a great writer, what he definitely is. The writer who fires at lions or catches marlins in the ocean, catastrophes with a plane, fights and participates in two wars, as a person is uncertain, not self-confident, a man who more suffers than enjoys life. Maybe part of the Lost Generation (from which he wants to be distanced), he is marked by war and death, his vision of the world and man is very pessimistic.
Hemingway’s life philosophy, which is woven in his works can be defined entirely by his credo “Man can be destroyed but can not be defeated.” In every book he writes, he searches for evidences of that statement. For Hemingway life is a fight, man is a hero and world – a battlefield. The fight is the fight of every man. That man can lose everything even his life just in one second, but he can not be defeated. He is a winner, having the chance to fight with fate, although the fight is futile and unequal. He is a winner, suffering alone and stoically, receiving the kicks of providence with dignity and grace, living with elegance. The real sense of life in Hemingway’s vision is that fight. The fight is important and important is the way a man fights. Hemingway doesn’t like cowards and false fighters. Though all his characters are losers in a way, they are and winners because they reveal their true character and potential to deal with the sarcastic games of fate. They are winners but they will not get anything even more - it will be got from them again and again. Fate is cruel and sinister and the fight is unfair. This philosophy may be seen completely in the masterpiece The Old Man and the Sea, which brings to Hemingway Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 for this work and for his contribution to the literature.
Beginning to speak about Hemingway’s contribution to world literature it is easier to quote him: “For the real writer every book is a new beginning, new attempt to reach something, which is not reached yet. He always has to strive for something, which has never been done, which others have tried but they haven’t succeeded in.” Hemingway as true modernist, is and an innovator. He searches for new devices, for new writing styles, for new undiscovered ideas, for new expressions. He invents his own unique style, using omitting of everything useless and simplification of the sentence and plot. He invents the principle of the iceberg, where the main ideas are undercurrent and unstated. His short stories, where the principle of the iceberg is mostly used, are prized as one of the best written. They have enormous influence on the reader and eternal value. His novels, although not prized very much by critics, also become an example for modern novel and many authors try to copy his approach and style.
Although not prized by the critics, most of his books climb to the top places of the lists of best-sellers. The novel For Whom the Bell Tolls will prove to be by far and away Hemingway’s most popular book and by 1943 it has sold over three-quarters of a million copies, the biggest best-seller in America since Gone with the Wind (1936) of Margaret Mitchell. Other Hemingway’s works are also greatly acknowledged by the audience despite of the negative critics.
Hemingway has big saved correspondence, published after his death. But all these letters make a man think why the lines intended to reach one person are reaching the world and the opposite. The answer is slipping out.
FAIR WIND!
VPi
:X
