Camus and Hemingway: The Solidarity of Rebellion
2003; International Fiction Association; Volume: 30; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0315-4149
Autores Tópico(s)American and British Literature Analysis
ResumoErnest Hemingway's writing had a profound influence on new generation of French writers in 1930s, particularly Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and, in a 1946 essay in Atlantic Monthly, Sartre said that L'Etranger would not be what it is if Camus had not read The Sun Also Rises. (1) Although there is rebellion of sorts in both works, neither novel displays much solidarity. Sun narrates erratic behavior of the lost generation, term Gertrude Stein used to describe American expatriates in Paris in 1920s, and Meursault's passive aggression in L'Etranger is a misguided attempt to cope with alienation and absurd. (2) The absurd describes state of mind of individuals who are conscious of a discrepancy between desire and reality: desire for freedom, happiness, and immortality, and knowledge that life imposes limits on desire even as death announces finitude. In fact, death in an absurd world is one of themes that Camus and Hemingway develop in their fiction and in their essays. In L'Homme revolte, (3) Camus's longest and perhaps most important book, he moves beyond solipsism, suicide, and death, major themes of Le Mythe de Sisyphe, (4) to address issues of social oppression, tyranny, and state-sponsored murder. He believes that people who rebel against these dehumanizing forces assert a value that transcends them as individuals. His group cogito, rebel, therefore we are, posits a collective ontology based on fact that rebellion defines and conditions human solidarity (Hr 431). Camus says that in order to exist, men and women must rebel, and he postulates need for metaphysical as well as sociopolitical revolt. However, in defending freedom, rebel strives not to violate freedom of others. There is, in fact, an enormous distance between rebel and revolutionary. The rebel respects life, including enemy's, whereas revolutionary believes that means, no matter how bloody, justify ends. The rebel, because he or she empathizes with victim(s), stops short of terror and murder, whereas revolutionary believes that, if world is to be transformed, death of opponents is both just and inevitable. But, says Camus, world is sundered whenever rebellion turns violent (Hr 685). Revolutions are therefore doomed to fail. Indeed, all modern revolutions, says Camus, have reinforced state control, and, from a human and historical vantage, they have been disasters. The French revolution of 1789 gave birth to Napoleon; revolution of 1848 to Napoleon III; Russian revolution of 1917 produced Stalin; in Italy, difficult years of 1920s spawned Mussolini; and Weimar Republic gave us Hitler. The ensuing state terror, murder, and suppression of human rights, although perhaps not inevitable, were at least predictable (Hr 583). As for Hemingway, people don't normally think of him as a writer with a social message. However, For Whom Bell Tolls, To Have and Have Not, The Fifth Column, and his 1937 Civil War dispatches to North-American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) while he was in Spain covering civil war belie legend of a man obsessed by himself, women, and drink. (5) Both men won Nobel Prize for literature (1951, 1957), a fact that attests a high degree of artistic integrity, and both men had a social conscience. At one time or another they were both journalists, Camus as editor of Combat during World War II, and Hemingway as a reporter for Toronto Star after World War I. Camus was in Resistance in early 1940s and Hemingway was wounded on Italian front during World War I. However, despite similarities between Hemingway's and Camus's lives and works, it is not my purpose to show influence. I am interested in points of join of their oeuvres that reflect social conscience. L'Homme revolte develops parameters and logic of a collective cogito that Hemingway's characters in For Whom Bell Tolls, To Have and Have Not, and The Fifth Column, all from 1930s, and even Hemingway himself had put into practice years before 1951, year L'Homme revolte was published. …
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