اگر فیلم سخیف
Silver Linings Playbook
را دیده باشید، یادتان هست که شخصیت اصلی فیلم ساعت‌ها و ساعت‌ها همین کتاب را می‌خواند و بعد که تمام می‌شود با گفتن جمله‌ای که آوردنش در این‌جا خوشایند نیست، کتاب را از پنجره پرت می‌کند بیرون. من از آن‌جا یادم بود که کتاب پایان تلخی دارد. ولی برخلاف شخصیت اصلی فیلم مشکلم پایانه‌ی داستان نیست و حتا فکر می‌کنم این پایانه‌ خیلی هم درخشان است.
در بین تمام کتاب‌هایی که درباره‌ی جنگ خواند‌ه‌ام کتاب وداع با اسلحه نمی‌تواند جایگاه منحصربه‌فردی داشته باشد. بگذارید بهتان بگویم که در یک رتبه‌بندی منصفانه این کتاب چندین پله پایین‌تر از کتاب‌های هاینریش بل قرار می‌گیرد. فارغ از تکنیک و فرم داستان، رمان زیادی کند پیش می‌رود و انرژی کمی دارد. جنگ آن‌قدری که به راوی نزدیک است، به خواننده نزدیک نیست. و او را چندان که از واقعیت جنگ برمی‌آید، تحت‌تاثیر قرار نمی‌دهد.

ربما ستغير رأيك في همنغواي لو قرأت هذه الرواية، رواية عن الحب والحرب بلغة مختلفة وسرد جميل وحوارات من أجمل ما يكون، لا غرابة أن تكون هذه الرواية هي أفضل ما كتبه همنغواي، كل شيء ساحر في الروايات، العلاقات، الصداقات، المعارك، يكتب همنغواي وكأنه يصف مشهدا حقيقياً، بل كأنه يكتب واقعاً متجسداً أمامه، تشعر أنك تغامر وتخوض الحرب وتقع في الحب وتشتهي الجلوس مع الشخصيات لتحاورهم ولتستفزهم وتطلق الضحكات المجنونة على بعض المواقف، الرواية طويلة بحق ولكن ليس من النوع الثقيل، ليست من الروايات التي تستدعي الكثير من التركيز والتشابك في العلاقات والقصة وإلى ما هنالك، كل شيء بسيط، هذه الرواية مكتوبة للمتعة، لكي يجلس القارئ ويتصفحها بدون ملل ولا رتابة في الأحداث، لا أدعي عدم مللي من بعض الصفحات وبعض الحوارات التي كانت مكتوبة وكأنها لأضفاء المزيد من الصفحات فقط، ولكن على أية حال يشفع الرواية أنها تشدك حتى عندما تتركها، ترجو أن تعود لها في أقرب وقت، حوالي ٤٨٠ صفحة تقريباً، لا أدري كيف بدأت ولا كيف أنتهت، كل شيء إنتهى سريعاً كما ستنتهي الحروب، أما الحب فشأن آخر، حب من نوع آخر، حب سخيف وجميل ومكرر وبسيط، قصة تملأها العفوية، رومانسية هادئة، تجعل من النهاية صعبة التقبل، صعبة الشرح، مع تعلقك بالشخصيات، أحذرك، في النهاية ستقتلع هذه الرواية قلبك كما فعلت مع قلبي ..

أنصح بهاً جداً ..

«Ero sempre imbarazzato dalle parole sacro, glorioso e sacrificio e dall'espressione invano. Le avevamo udite a volte ritti nella pioggia quasi fuori dalla portata della voce, in modo che solo le parole urlate giungevano, e le avevamo lette su proclami che venivano spiaccicati su altri proclami, da un pezzo ormai, e non avevo visto niente di sacro, e le cose gloriose non avevano gloria e i sacrifici erano come i macelli a Chicago se con la carne non si faceva altro che seppellirla. C'erano molte parole che non si riusciva ad ascoltare e si finiva che soltanto i nomi dei luoghi avevano dignità. Anche certi numeri e certe date, e con i nomi dei luoghi erano l'unica cosa che si potesse dire che avesse un significato. Parole astratte come gloria, onore, coraggio o dedizione erano oscene accanto ai nomi concreti dei villaggi, ai numeri delle strade, ai nomi dei fiumi, ai numeri dei reggimenti e alle date.»
Di fronte a parole di cotanta potenza, si può solo tacere. Tacere e riflettere.

خوشخوان و جذاب! یک سوم آخر کتاب برام طوری بود که نمی‌تونستم کتابو رها کنم! عاشق سبکِ جملاتِ کوتاهِ همینگوی هستم و همینطور طنزهای شیرینش که توی مکالمات شخصیت‌هاست. آخرین حرفم : اینو بیشتر از "پیرمرد و دریا" دوست داشتم :)

داستان عشق در میان جنگ بود با پایانی تلخ! هرچقدر حوادث میان داستان خوب پیش رفت اما پایان آن تلخی بود.
توصیفات عینی و ملموس و شخصیت پردازی های خوب از ویژگی های این اثر ارنست همینگوی است.

Third Reading: 27 June 2024

This third time through my focus was on the reasons behind my previously omitting that fifth star from its rating. As I recall from my two previous readings, I felt that the relationship between Fredric and Catherine was a bit childish in its depiction. They essential used single syllable exchanges of words that were mostly focused on their acute insecurities in their love for each other.

My attention given to this nagging detail brought about the realization of how utterly young these characters were. They both must have been in their very twenties, which is consistent with Hemingway’s own age during his participation in WWI and his own relationship with a Red Cross nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky.

This realization of age led me to examine my own inability to rationally navigate through the omnipotent power of love at such an early age. It was with this self-examination that Hemingway’s depiction fell into place. Fredric and Catherine (and Hemingway) were little more than adolescents who were swept up in a desperately emotional tie to one another. It’s no wonder that their insecurities ruled their every word and their every act. This is Hemingway tapping into his own life, once again, to make his story as true as he could make it. With this understanding now in place, the fifth star can be granted, and A Farewell to Arms becomes a bit more real in my mind.

Finally, this version of the novel has quite a bit of draft material included in its appendices. It was interesting to see how the novel started out in Hemingway’s mind. I found it amazing that at some point, Hemingway changed the perspective from third to first person, and knowing that Fredric Henry was initially named Emmett Hancock fed my love for trivial knowledge. But most of all, it was enlightening to see how every one of these draft passages were of a lesser quality than the final corresponding material included in the novel. It was inspiring to see that the secret to good writing is indeed rewriting.

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Second Reading: 27 June 2019

The present-day American condition of government is a farce. Our leaders appeal to nonsensical emotion or simply lie to those that are willing to accept the miss truths out of loyalties akin to religious beliefs. They wish to take us down a path that has been traveled many times in the past in order to further secure their power.

Today’s condition, however, is promising. Our present farce is a result of technicalities that favored a minority as opposed to widespread political support. We’ve never been more reasonable as a society and we’ve grown since the days of WWI. And while that growth has not been smooth, it is growth nonetheless.

Along that path of growth rests A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway presents a critical view of war and questions some of the fundamental reasons why we go to war. He presents a story that examines a duty to reason and compares that with the blind loyalties that permeate war. Hemingway contends that once government forsakes reason, abstract loyalties should be forsaken in the same breath. It is through this individual process of thought that the atrocities of war can be avoided in the future. While it’s obvious that Hemingway was ahead of his time, he was certainly on the right track.

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First Reading: 6 November 2004

Far away though we are, in both place and time, from the First World War, Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms can give the interested reader a sense of the horrors of that war, and of the despair and disillusionment that the vast blood-letting of the war caused throughout the Western world. Hemingway seamlessly combines an epic story of World War I battle action with a tender and affecting love story. It is, for many admirers of the work of this great American author, their favorite Hemingway novel. I know that it is mine.

Hemingway fans and scholars alike know how closely A Farewell to Arms corresponds with key events from Hemingway’s life. Hemingway wanted to serve in the First World War, even though the United States Army had rejected him for military service on account of his poor eyesight; and therefore, he travelled to Europe and volunteered as an ambulance driver for the Italian Army in 1918. Seriously wounded by mortar fire along the Italian Front, Hemingway convalesced in a hospital near Milan, and became involved in a passionate though ill-fated love affair with a Red Cross nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky.

These bare-bones details were fleshed out by Hemingway to become A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway’s fictional counterpart for this novel is Frederic Henry, who like Hemingway is an American. A commissioned officer with the rank of lieutenant, Henry serves on the Italian front, is wounded, recovers in hospital in Italy, and falls in love with a nurse – not someone with a “von” in her name (might confuse the readership – aren’t we supposed to be fighting the Germans?), but rather a demure young Englishwoman named Catherine Barkley.

Part of the novel’s interest inheres in Frederic Henry’s changing attitudes toward war. At first, the wounded Frederic is eager to return to the front, to the camaraderie of men-at-arms and the shared dangers and joys of a soldier's life, as shown in this conversation between Frederic and the house doctor at his hospital:

t“You are in such a hurry to get back to the front?”

t“Why not?”

t“It is very beautiful,” he said. “You are a noble young man.”

As the novel continues, however, Frederic comes to feel that his primary duty is to Catherine, and to the child that eventually results from their love for each other – hence Frederic’s ultimate willingness to declare his “farewell to arms,” to separate from the warrior code that has hitherto sustained him, and to place a simple, peaceful human relationship with wife and child at the center of his life.

Many readers back in 1929 would no doubt have sympathized with Frederic’s decision. Eleven years after the Armistice of Compiègne concluded the “War to End All Wars,” most observers would no doubt have seen the First World War as a vast exercise in futility – a monstrous conflict that killed ten million people, left another 28 million wounded or missing, and resulted in a Europe more vulnerable and less stable than it had been before the guns of August 1914 first roared to life. That attitude toward the carnage of World War I can be seen when Hemingway writes that “abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.”

That attitude toward war also comes forth in Hemingway’s recounting of the Italian retreat from Caporetto, a dramatic highlight of the novel. Historically, the Battle of Caporetto (24 October – 19 November 1917) was an Italian defeat at the hands of Austro-Hungarian troops supported by German reinforcements. Italy suffered over 300,000 casualties in what has been called the worst loss in Italian military history.

But wait: the story gets even worse. The Italian commander, Marshal Luigi Cadorna, compounded his many strategic and tactical errors before and during the battle by ordering the execution of any officer found retreating from the battle lines, as if the loss of the battle was his officers' fault and not his own.

In Hemingway’s hands, these cold, sad facts of history take on the texture and drama of lived experience, as Frederic Henry and various Italian officers face the prospect of execution for their commander’s blunders:

Two carabinieri took the lieutenant-colonel to the river bank. He walked in the rain, an old man with his hat off, a carabinieri on either side. I did not watch them shoot him but I heard the shots. They were questioning someone else. This officer too was separated from his troops. He was not allowed to make an explanation. He cried when they read the sentence from the pad of paper, and they were questioning another when they shot him. They made a point of being intent on questioning the next man while the man who had been questioned before was being shot. In this way there was obviously nothing they could do about it. I did not know whether I should wait to be questioned or make a break now.

Small wonder that Frederic and Catherine make their own “farewell to arms,” crossing the border into Switzerland and enjoying an idyllic winter interlude so complete that Catherine is able to say, “You’ve forgotten the army.” Yet just as Hemingway’s real-life relationship with Agnes von Kurowsky did not end happily, so complications attendant upon the birth of Frederic and Catherine’s child pose the danger that their love, while true and intense, may be short-lived.

I returned to A Farewell to Arms in the context of a trip, some years ago, to Havana, Cuba, where my wife and I saw various sites associated with Hemingway and his life, including the Floridita bar where he drank daiquiris and the Ambos Mundos hotel where he lived and wrote during the 1930’s. And perhaps this novel occupies my thoughts today because it is Veterans’ Day, a federal holiday in honor of American veterans, and a day that had its historical antecedents in the armistice that ended the First World War on November 11, 1918. For me, no other American novel of World War I captures the horror of that war, or the cruelty with which war separates people from one another, so well as A Farewell to Arms.

3 stars are more than what it really deserves from my point of view. characters are badly unrealistic with no root in the past. the way they act is artificial. The romantic dialogues, with all respects, are terrible.

and I should add that I am aware the writer did some of them consciously. Hemingway tries to demonstrate how war has changed people into some indifferent, pointless men who are tired of war, and in every act they do, the only purpose is to forget the war. I got it and I admire it. but the book is unable to reach its object.

If you know the atmosphere of World War I, maybe you feel more empathy with Fredric, Rinaldi, Catherine, and Priest. Otherwise, it lacks everything required to attract you.

and after all, the ending was disappointing. maybe Hemingway thought a bitter ending causes the story to remain better in minds.

"Tell me exactly what happened. Did you do any heroic acts?"

"No," I said. "I was blown up while we were eating cheese."

What can I say that hasn't already been said?

Yes, the man/woman stuff is awkward as hell, with all the "Darlings" and "Say you love me" coming off as so much bad movie dialogue.

But, I loved hearing all the characters give their opinions on the war. The action sequences are compelling, and frequently disturbing.

And, Henry's repartee with Rinaldi is absolutely priceless!

Plus, considering this is a story about war, the book had far more laughs that I was expecting, so here's to you, Papa!


I truly enjoyed listening to the audiobook. John Slattery, who is perhaps best known as Roger Sterling from Mad Men, did a fantastic job, and made the book come to life.

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.

*
"I'm not brave any more, darling. I'm all broken. They've broken me. I know it now."
"Everybody is that way."
"But it's awful. They just keep it up till they break you."

این کتاب زاویه دید متفاوتی از جنگ را روایت میکنه
و البته باز قهرمان کتاب مردی است با شخصیتی خاص
افسری آمریکایی در ایتالیا و در بحبوبه جنگ درگیر عشق با پرستاری انگلیسی می شود

صحنه جنگی هم در کتاب کم نیست و همچنین نشان دادن واقعیت جنگ
سربازان و سرگردانی که دنبال فرصتی اند که از جنگ فرار کنند یا مرخصی بگیرند
حتی بخودشون ضربه میزنند تا در بیمارستان بستری بشوند

عشق زیبای فردریک هنری و کاترین بارکلی نقطه اوج داستان بود.این قسمت رو همینگوی عالی در آورده بود و سرشار از احساس بود
ولی از صحنه جنگ و تشریحش اصلا لذت نبردم.بنظرم کمی بیش از حد طولانی شده بود
فک کنم این کتاب برام وداع با همینگوی هم بود
پیرمرد و دریا و این کتابش رو خوندم.دیگه حسی برای خوند�� کتاب دیگری از ایشون ندارم

2.5 This was my first full-length Hemingway and I’m still not exactly sure what I think of him as an author to be honest.

When it comes to this novel, I think my issues were more with the content than with the prose itself; his straightforward style of writing is so easy to digest and gets his points across so well that I can’t recall ever being confused about what was going on which can be rare when it comes to classics.

The plot itself though? That’s another story. None of these characters (except for maybe Rinaldi) really stood out to me, the romance was… questionable, and when both of those elements in a story are lackluster, I find it hard to care about what I’m reading. All that aside though, the ending!!! THE ENDING!!!

Something about books that just END in the midst of a tragic scene always leave me staring at a wall trying to process what I just read, and this was no different. I almost reminded me of the last sentence of Giovanni’s room, and that’s one of my favorite finales of all time!

All in all, I do think Hemingway works for me in a weird way, I just need to find a work of his that is more engaging so I’m not bored out of my mind until the last 25 pages!