The Mouse in Pamplona
The more I think of the problems of our lives, the more I am persuaded that we ought to choose Irony and Pity for our assessors and judges as the ancient Egyptians called upon the Goddess Isis and the Goddess Nephtys on behalf of their dead. Irony and Pity are both of good counsel; the first with her smiles makes life agreeable; the other sanctifies it with her tears. The Irony which I invoke is no cruel Deity. She mocks neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed. Her mirth disarms and it is she who teaches us to laugh at rogues and fools, whom but for her we might be so weak as to despise and hate. Anatole France, Thais
I have amused myself in the past few hours by playing a game invented by Hemingwaty in his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway called his game "Irony and Pity" and used it as a mechanism to deflate the dramatic view of life suggested by the great French writer quoted above. The hero of Hemingway's novel, roguishly named "Jake," suffers from what most of us would call impotence, but which Jake ironically explains as "an accident" thereby earning more pity than would be the case if his inability to "get up" -- as Hemingway puns in the same chapter of the book -- were an effect of a neurotic persuasion. Contrary to France's "good counsel," Jake finds nothing in his "accident" to smile about. His condition is real, as are all the afflictions life and history have thrust upon us. And yet, we do not in the novel find Jake a disagreeable, but rather an affable person who we are led to identify as the author's surrogate.
Given that Hemingway puts the words "irony and pity" into the mouth of a character not particularly likeable -- and certainly not identifiable as the author in disguise -- the scene is all the more ironic. Hemingway draws Bill Gorton, the "unlikeable" character, as the polar opposite of the down-to-earth and bucolic Jake (a fisherman, like Hemingway). The phallic symbols repeatedly written into the chapter -- and the entire book -- enforce what could be called a Hemingway fixation, that life is all about "getting up." The wriggly worms that Jake is good at corralling into tobacco tins, stand in contrast to the sturdy trout that Bill catches more of than Jake does. If life were as simple as Hemingway makes it out, if we are as impotent in bringing our "fish" to ground as Hemingway makes us out to be (in The Old Man and the Sea) then all is "ado" and life itself is an ironic game played by pitiable fools. The sun "rises," but we do not.
In rambling the internet in search of a copy of the Hemingway novel -- I do not own one -- another googled "score" took me to an excerpt from Hendrik van Loon's The Story of Mankind, a pseudo history published in 1922, 4 years before Hemingways first novel. The following long quote struck me as an example of history's pitiful irony.
Often before have I warned you against the false impression which is created by the use of our so-called historical epochs which divide the story of man into four parts, the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation, and Modern Time. The last of these terms is the most dangerous. The word "modern" implies that we, the people of the twentieth century, are at the top of human achievement. Fifty years ago the liberals of England who followed the leadership of Gladstone felt that the problem of a truly representative and democratic form of government had been solved forever by the second great Reform Bill, which gave workmen an equal share in the government with their employers. When Disraeli and his conservative friends talked of a dangerous "leap in the dark" they [the liberals] answered "No." They felt certain of their cause and trusted that henceforth all classes of society would co-operate to make the government of their common country a success. Since then many things have happened, and the few liberals who are still alive begin to understand that they were mistaken.
Continuing my morning's playing of Hemingway's game, the idea has once more been made clear to me that my favorite philosopher was as pessimistic as Hemingway and van Loon were that humanity, as a group, would be able to bootstrap itself out ot its ironical state. After all, the last line of the opening paragraph of Spinoza's first work expresses his desire to find "something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity." [Italics added.] The final sentences of his last work make the same point, that "salvation" is not to be found by the masses, but only those who -- perhaps with Anatole France -- can smile at history's unfolding and thus lift themselves from the mass of those who are to be pitied. "If salvation were ready to hand and could be discovered without great toil, how could it be that it is almost universally neglected. All great things are as difficult as they are noble."
Perhaps, this new device, this blog-world, has been brought into being as a place where irony and pity can be discussed as things out there, objects we can choose to understand as creatures of the human "accident." We are perhaps impotent to extricate ourselves from the skins we were born in, but -- I must phrase this as a question -- is it possible to live as something other than pitiful creatures doomed to gather wriggly worms? ... can we never expect actually to fish with the expectation of catching something worth having?
Are we crazy for wishng it might be so?
I have amused myself in the past few hours by playing a game invented by Hemingwaty in his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway called his game "Irony and Pity" and used it as a mechanism to deflate the dramatic view of life suggested by the great French writer quoted above. The hero of Hemingway's novel, roguishly named "Jake," suffers from what most of us would call impotence, but which Jake ironically explains as "an accident" thereby earning more pity than would be the case if his inability to "get up" -- as Hemingway puns in the same chapter of the book -- were an effect of a neurotic persuasion. Contrary to France's "good counsel," Jake finds nothing in his "accident" to smile about. His condition is real, as are all the afflictions life and history have thrust upon us. And yet, we do not in the novel find Jake a disagreeable, but rather an affable person who we are led to identify as the author's surrogate.
Given that Hemingway puts the words "irony and pity" into the mouth of a character not particularly likeable -- and certainly not identifiable as the author in disguise -- the scene is all the more ironic. Hemingway draws Bill Gorton, the "unlikeable" character, as the polar opposite of the down-to-earth and bucolic Jake (a fisherman, like Hemingway). The phallic symbols repeatedly written into the chapter -- and the entire book -- enforce what could be called a Hemingway fixation, that life is all about "getting up." The wriggly worms that Jake is good at corralling into tobacco tins, stand in contrast to the sturdy trout that Bill catches more of than Jake does. If life were as simple as Hemingway makes it out, if we are as impotent in bringing our "fish" to ground as Hemingway makes us out to be (in The Old Man and the Sea) then all is "ado" and life itself is an ironic game played by pitiable fools. The sun "rises," but we do not.
In rambling the internet in search of a copy of the Hemingway novel -- I do not own one -- another googled "score" took me to an excerpt from Hendrik van Loon's The Story of Mankind, a pseudo history published in 1922, 4 years before Hemingways first novel. The following long quote struck me as an example of history's pitiful irony.
Often before have I warned you against the false impression which is created by the use of our so-called historical epochs which divide the story of man into four parts, the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation, and Modern Time. The last of these terms is the most dangerous. The word "modern" implies that we, the people of the twentieth century, are at the top of human achievement. Fifty years ago the liberals of England who followed the leadership of Gladstone felt that the problem of a truly representative and democratic form of government had been solved forever by the second great Reform Bill, which gave workmen an equal share in the government with their employers. When Disraeli and his conservative friends talked of a dangerous "leap in the dark" they [the liberals] answered "No." They felt certain of their cause and trusted that henceforth all classes of society would co-operate to make the government of their common country a success. Since then many things have happened, and the few liberals who are still alive begin to understand that they were mistaken.
Continuing my morning's playing of Hemingway's game, the idea has once more been made clear to me that my favorite philosopher was as pessimistic as Hemingway and van Loon were that humanity, as a group, would be able to bootstrap itself out ot its ironical state. After all, the last line of the opening paragraph of Spinoza's first work expresses his desire to find "something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity." [Italics added.] The final sentences of his last work make the same point, that "salvation" is not to be found by the masses, but only those who -- perhaps with Anatole France -- can smile at history's unfolding and thus lift themselves from the mass of those who are to be pitied. "If salvation were ready to hand and could be discovered without great toil, how could it be that it is almost universally neglected. All great things are as difficult as they are noble."
Perhaps, this new device, this blog-world, has been brought into being as a place where irony and pity can be discussed as things out there, objects we can choose to understand as creatures of the human "accident." We are perhaps impotent to extricate ourselves from the skins we were born in, but -- I must phrase this as a question -- is it possible to live as something other than pitiful creatures doomed to gather wriggly worms? ... can we never expect actually to fish with the expectation of catching something worth having?
Are we crazy for wishng it might be so?
posted by Benedict S. at 11:30 AM
3 Comments:
I don't know about anybody else, but I absolutely love the character of Bill Gorton. Jake is dour and self-obsessed; Lady Brett is heedless and adorable; Mike Campbell is too drunk to matter, and Robert Cohn is hapless. Only Bill Gorton slides through life having a good time. I have little interest in Hemingway, but The Sun Also Rises is a helluva read if you don't dwell on all the symbolism and what passed for sensationalism 80 years ago.
I enjoyed reading this book. Although there was not a deep plot I did find
that there was an overall feel to the book. They sure drank a lot. It was
interesting how Hemmingway did not use the usual conversation text format, as in...
"Blah blah blah", she said.
"Yada yada yada", he replied.
"Fa fa fafa fa fa", she exclaimed.
I found Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby a better read.Sorry mouse,I relize your post wasn't for book reviews but what can one say after you,it would look meek.
I agree with John America about the comparative merits of 1920's American lit. Gatsby was a better book but at the time Hemingway owned the critics. Both writers were breaking ground, in the barrooms as well as on the page. Gotta see it all in context, and reading that stuff today is a trip.
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