With the Resulting Stillness
2001; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/hem.2001.0000
ISSN1548-4815
Autores Tópico(s)American Literature and Culture
Resumo'· POEM < WITH THE RESULTING STILLNESS STEPHEN BODNAR Thepoem, "With the Resulting Stillness," is made up entirely oflines, orparts of lines, from Hemingway's own letters. The source used is Carlos Baker's Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961, quoted with the permission ofSimon and Schuster and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. There is nothing like Africa as there is nothing like youth. . .. or waking each day not knowing what the day wiU bring but knowing that it will bring something. We rode out to the cemetery through the country he wrote about. I like to write standing up. He was buried in a plain pine coffin, newly painted black so that the paint came off on the faces and the hands. ... SimUes are like defective ammunition . . .and leaving was like an amputation. I got your check cashed it like a son of a bitch. ... About the smeU of death part. . .. That is all a writer of fiction is. Let me know when we start to get rich. Your legend grows like the barnacles on the bottom of a ship.... The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish the hemingway review, vol. 2o. no. 2. spring 2001. Copyright © 2001 The Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Published by the University ofIdaho Press, Moscow, Idaho. POEM · 115 is a fish. But nobody likes to be tailed. The question is: can you write? If I praise your damn poetry any more you'll think I'm a fairy or a critic. ... Hadley joins in congratulations.... No I don't think "My Old Man" derives from Anderson. Dear Miss Stein: We have been killing catdekilling lions for the Masai. It is lovely now and hurricane months . . .are very beautiful. And how is Zelda? I get damned maudlin about how swell you are. Today your letter. . .came. —wash and peel all the fruit you eat. Let us take up the word bitch again. To get back to your letter. ... .Liquor is the only mechanical relief. The sharks are all sharks no better. ... I am as committed as an armoured column in a narrow defile..... Mary sends her very best. Yours in belle lettres. P.S. It has always been my ambition. That is all a writer of fiction is. Especially when you look forward like hell to getting maU.... Patrick got a hundred in so many subjects that we decided it is a lousy school. Almost like a genius. I'm sure we should all be happy as kings. I wish Charlie and Max were alive because they would have had fun. The world is so full of a number of things. Seems like a pretty good basic slogan for any time. About dying: 116 · THE HEMINGWAY REVIEW We must do it but there is no reason we should give it importance. Only lets hurry to get to Havana and to Key West. ... We sail for Spain in May. . . .it is a story about a boy who has come back from the war. The war is never mentioned. The Buick is running weU. This may be one of the things that helps it. She found a way ofwriting that was like writing letters aU the time. . . .very possible that tearing down is more important than building up. Nobody knows about the generation that follows them.... But maybe wUl get around to that later. It's wonderful to be a writer. Sometimes it's like drUling rock and then blasting it out with charges. You know I am superstitious and it is a hell of a damned dirty business. . To make a pitcher of Bloody Marys (any smaller amount is worthless). . .. You write a fine letter kid. Don't forget to blow your nose and turn around three times before you go to bed. That way you can always go on. I want life to hold some mysteries. Bumby, my oldest boy. . .is somewhere around fifteen sixteen or seventeen. He had a very steep trajectory and was almost like a guided missile with no one guiding him. Must truly get to work now. POEM · 117 Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out thin. Going fishing next week. (.. . .and live to be a wise old man with white beard and chew tobacco) No'one you love·is ever dead. I would like to have the proofs as soon as possible. Tomorrow is my birthday. There is something morbid about it. ... .and didn't he know that the man in The Snows of Kilimanjaro could have spoken of him, or thought of him. . .. but-it was always fuU of pity as though you had a butterfly or a moth for a friend. Then, now. ... Very hard to write. How does it go? And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. ...
Referência(s)