Министерство образования РФ
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Реферат на тему: ErnestHemingway: TragicGenius
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Томск — 2003 The reason that Hemingway meant somuch to us," Archibald MacLeish, the American poet, once observed,«was that his work reflected truthfully and without rhetoric the faultsand virtues and the essential humanity of the people among whom he lived andthat the power and vividness of his writing was such that his work could anddid break through barriers of language and fogs of misrepresentation to touchmen everywhere.»
Reporter, soldier, short-story writer,novelist, playwright, deep-sea fisherman, and big game hunter, Hemingway was aman whose unique mastery of the art of writing influenced the style of anentire generation of writers. That influence spread far beyond the borders ofthe United States and far beyond the English language. It is an influence thatpersists today.
Ernest Miller Hemingway, one of sixchildren, was born into the family of a small town doctor at Oak Park,Illinois, on July 21, 1899. He was active in sports; and under the guidance ofhis father, he came to love the outdoors, becoming an excellent hunter andfisherman. His parents wanted him to become a doctor or a musician, but aftergraduation from high school, he began his writing career as a sports reporterfor the Kansas City Star.
When the United States entered World WarI, Hemingway left his job and tried to enlist in the army. After repeatedrejections because of his youth, he was finally accepted as an ambulance
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driver withthe Red Cross in Italy. Shortly before his 19th birthday, he was badly woundedby enemy fire and spent several weeks in a hospital in Milan. This experiencewould provide material for his future novel A Farewell to Arms. Afterleaving the hospital, he enlisted in the Italian Arditi, an infantry unit, and served until the Armistice onNovember 11, 1918.
Hemingway returned to Chicago in 1919 andthen went to Toronto, Canada, where he worked for the Toronto Star. Twoyears later, he was appointed to the Sfar's international news bureau and wasassigned to Paris. From 1921 to 1927, he lived in Europe where he worked hardat realizing his ambition to become a writer. Joining the literary circle ofexpatriate American writers brought together by poet, author Gertrude Stein,Hemingway profited from his association with writers like her, Ezra Pound, andF. Scott Fitzgerald. He wrote his first three works: Three Short Stories andTen Poems (1923); In Our Time (1925), a collection of shortstories; and The Torrents of Spring (1926), a novel, which wentunnoticed by the public.
With the publication of The Sun AlsoRises in 1926, Hemingway's first major success, his reputation as anovelist was established. This novel is considered by many critics to be hisfinest work. The hero of the story, Jake Barnes, his sexual powers destroyed bya war wound, faced, under unusually poignant circumstances, the problem whichwas to be the theme of much of Hemingway's
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laterwork: how man proves his manhood. Written in an original style, the novelquickly influenced other writers. Keeping emotion restrained, Hemingwayemphasized his ideas through understatement. The American novelist, James T.Farrell, credited Hemingway with contributing «toward making the American•idiom the language for the evocation for sensitive and complicatedfeelings.»
In 1927 Hemingway published a collectionof short stones called Men Without Women. The following year he returnedto the United States, where he lived off and on for the next ten years at KeyWest, Florida. There he worked on A Farewell to Arms (1929). Thefollowing passage from the novel has often been pointed out as a statement ofHemingway's world view as well as the key to the novel's meaning:
«If people bring so much courage tothis world the world has to kill to break them, so of course it kills them. Theworld breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. Butthose that will not break it kills. It kilts the very good and the very gentleand the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure thatit will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.»
In 1932 Hemingway published Death inthe Afternoon, a moving study of bullfighting, a subject in which he hadshown a constant interest both in his short stories and in The Sun AlsoRises. «Bullfighting,» he wrote, «is the only art in whichthe
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artistis in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performanceis left to the fighter's honor."
From his home in Florida, Hemingway mademany trips, including several safaris to
Africa.Drawing on the experiences of these African trips, he wrote The Green Hillsof Africa (1935), a nonfiction book about «pursuit as happiness,»and two of his best short stories, The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936) and TheShort Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1938). It is for his short storiesrather than his other works that Hemingway has received some of his highestpraise.
At the beginning of the Spanish Civil Warin 1936, Hemingway went to Spain to gather material for a film, The SpanishEarth, and returned to that country the next year as a correspondent forthe North American Newspaper Alliance. Out of his experiences in the SpanishCivil War came a play, The Fifth Column (1938), and his longest novel, ForWhom the Bell Tolls (1940). The latter work emphasizes the oneness ofhumanity and the idea that a loss of liberty anywhere means the loss of libertyeverywhere. This idea is well expressed by the hero, Robert Jordan, as he isdying:
" I have fought for what I believedin for a year now. If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fineplace and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it… I wishthere were some way to pass on what I've learned, though. Christ, I
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waslearning fast there at the end."
Criticshave described this novel as a study in «epic courage andcompassion,» and in it, according to some, Hemingway reached the peak ofhis creative skill.
World War II saw Hemingway serving againin the role of war correspondent. When the war ended, he settled in Cuba wherehe lived until 1959.
During this period of his life at an old,somewhat dilapidated estate called Finca Vigia, he talked with many ofthe fishermen at nearby San Francisco de Paula. One of the stones he heard gavehim the idea of his short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952). Thenovel tells of an old Cuban fisherman who, after a run of bad luck, hooks agiant marlin. The story of the old man's struggle with the fish, of his finalvictory which turns into defeat as sharks attack the catch and reduce it to askeleton, ends with the words, «Man is not meant for defeat. A man can bedestroyed but not defeated.» The novel led to Hemingway's receiving thePulitzer Prize given each year for distinguished American fiction.
In 1954 the Swedish Academy awarded himthe Nobel Prize for Literature for «his powerful, style-forming mastery ofthe art of modern narration, as most recently revealed in The Old Man andthe Sea.» A portion of his acceptance speech summarized hisattitude toward his work:
«For he [the writer] does his workalone and if he is a good enough writer, each book should be a new
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beginningwhere he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should alwaystry for ' " something thathas never been done or that others have tried and failed."
During the last years of his life,Hemingway was a figure of heroic proportion. He had been honoredinternationally, and his rugged life which he had lived presented the publicwith an image of a superman. Yet Hemingway suffered fits of depression madeworse by an increasingly serious stomach ailment. Writing was becomingimpossible as he realized his own human weaknesses and frailties. On July 2,1961, firing both charges of a double barrelled shotgun, Hemingway committedsuicide.
The literary historian, Max J. Herzberg,offers his assessment of Hemingway: "...as the author's own life andpersonality begin to fade, as they must, from the public interest, it is highlydoubtful that his work will fade with them. In all probability Hemingway'stechnical achievement has been great enough so that his better books wouldsurvive if only for the style in which they were written....His techniques, hisattitudes, his sensitivity to the spirit of the age, and to violence, which hasplayed such a role in it, conspired to establish him as one of the greatest ofmodern writers, and the best of his work seems likely to secure him a permanentand prominent place in the history of American letters."
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Key words
Achievement — достижение
Emphasizes – выразительный
Honor – отвага
Humanity – гуманный
Influenced – влияние
Outstanding — выдающийся
Rugged – суровый
Struggle – бороться
To trip– путешествовать
Writer– писатель
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References
Thomas Kral “Portraits inwords”. Washington D. C. 1992.