Just finished Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms yesterday. I bought it in April last year and even brought it along with me to NS, but never actually got past the first few chapters. Inspired by my success in finishing Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda within a day last week, I picked Hemingway up again on 31 May and finished on 3 June.
I don't suppose I enjoy fiction much, but there were some great moments, most of them subtly humorous and candidly disarming (no pun intended), hitting notes of profundity in some places. The story follows (and is narrated by) an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army in World War I. Here are some of my favourite excerpts.
A conversation between the protagonist, Lieutenant Henry, and Passini, another soldier:
"I know it is bad but we must finish it."
"It doesn't finish. There is no finish to a war."
"Yes there is."
Passini shook his head.
"War is not won by victory... One side must stop fighting."
Henry observes the three doctors who have come to see his injured leg:
I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend to you a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success. These were three such doctors.
A nurse believes Henry deliberately overdosed on alcohol in order to induce jaundice, so that he may be exempted from the front. Henry replies:
"Miss Van Campen," I said, "did you ever know a man who tried to disable himself by kicking himself in the scrotum?"
Rinaldi, a doctor in the army and one of Henry's best friends, comments on Henry's tooth-brushing glass, which he has kept:
"...I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating aspirin and cursing harlots. Every time I see that glass I think of you trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush."
The Italians are at war with the Austrians, and Gino (another member of the ambulance unit) and Henry talk about food:
"Yes, they give the battalions in the front line as much as they can but the ones in back are very short. They have eaten all the Austrians' potatoes and chestnuts from the woods. They ought to feed them better. We are big eaters. I am sure there is plenty of food. It is very bad for the soldiers to be short of food. Have you ever noticed the difference it makes in the way you think?"
"Yes," I said. "It can't win a war but it can lose one."
Chapter 31 began with this line (I like it for what it is, not because of the significance of '31'):
You do not know how long you are in a river when the current moves swiftly. It seems a long time and it may be very short.
Henry thinks of his knee, which was operated on by a doctor called Valentini (as the other three doctors mentioned earlier were incompetent) after it was severely injured by a mortar explosion. At this point in the story, he is trying to run away from the front:
Valentini had done a fine job. I had done half the retreat on foot and swum part of the Tagliamento with his knee. It was his knee all right. The other knee was mine. Doctors did things to you and then it was not your body any more.
My favourite part, and what seems to be a statement of the theme or underlying pulse of the story, occurs exactly three-quarters into the novel, on page 249 of 332:
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Having arrived safely in Milan, Henry spends one of his days playing billiards with Count Greffi, a ninety-four-year-old who played excellent billiards in spite of his age, and whose birthdays were the main social event of the city. After the game, they talk about growing old, among other things:
"You never seem old."
"It is the body that is old. Sometimes I am afraid I will break off a finger as one breaks a stick of chalk. And the spirit is no older and not much wiser."
"You are wise."
"No, that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful."
"Perhaps that is wisdom."
"It is a very unattractive wisdom. What do you value most?"
"Some one I love."
"With me it is the same. That is not wisdom. Do you value life?"
"Yes."
"So do I. Because it is all I have. And to give birthday parties," he laughed. "You are probably wiser that I am. You do not give birthday parties."
...
"Do younger nations always win wars?"
"They are apt to for a time."
"Then what happens?"
"They become older nations."
"You said you were not wise."
"Dear boy, that is not wisdom. That is cynicism."
"It sounds very wise to me."
In order to escape the army police in Milan, Henry and his 'wife' Catherine (they were never officially married) row all night into Switzerland, on a boat loaned to them by the hotel barman, who is a friend of Henry's:
"I think we're in Switzerland, Cat," I said.
"Really?"
"There's no way to know until we see Swiss troops."
"Or the Swiss navy."
"The Swiss navy's no joke for us. That last motor boat we heard was probably the Swiss navy."
"If we're in Switzerland let's have a big breakfast. They have wonderful rolls and butter and jam in Switzerland."
Loyalty and desertion are among the themes of the novel, and it struck me at the end of the novel, that all the doctors in it (for there were many) were men of great devotion to their duty. In contrast, Lieutenant Henry eventually deserted the army just to be with the love of his life, Catherine Barkley, an English nurse.
Although the novel is centred on the romance between Henry and Catherine, the story of the doctors (none so significant as Rinaldi's) weaves itself like a countermelody into this primary framework, for it is the doctors who keep Henry alive, and it is the doctors who indirectly bring the tale to its painful and heartbreaking conclusion.
No comments:
Post a Comment