وای آخر داستان پوکیدم!!!
عاشقانه‌ای آرام در دل جنگ...

برشی از کتاب:
روزنامه داشتم اما نخواندم
چون نمی‌خواستم خبری از جنگ بخوانم
برای خودم صلح جداگانه‌ای ترتیب داده بودم



شما مومن به خدا هستید؟
شب‌ها بله

همینگوی بسیار ساده و ملموس مینویسه
همین

What a strange and sometimes hollow novel.

It’s my first Hemingway and someone suggested that could have been my mistake.

I see it’s often well received and reviewed by other Goodreads users and I’ve found some reviews well-written and interesting. I can’t include myself as a big fan.

I did some post-read research to see what I could be missing.
Seems to be a fair bit written about the meanings behind Hemingway’s use of rain, snow, plus his use of convincing, realistic, clipped dialogue. I’m not convinced.

I understand his unadorned writing style was somewhat trailblazing, and it’s been suggested this was a reaction to the descriptive-laden style of, among others, Hardy, the Brontës and Jane Austin. Hemingway worked tirelessly to self-edit and delete ‘unnecessary’ words. My feeling is he might have gone too far.

Interestingly, my former German lecturer said it was the first English text she got to read.
I commented that for me the writing, was simplistic and sometimes juvenile.
‘Exactly,’ she replied. ‘That’s why it was such a good choice for my first English novel’.
I’ll leave it at that.

2.5 stars rounded up.

به نام او

کمتر نویسنده ای به مانند همینگوی پیدا میشود که اینقدر تجربه زیستی داشته باشد و تمام این تجربه ها در آثارش منعکس باشد ، سفر، جنگ، ورزش ، شکار،
عشق و ... واقعا از این منظر همینگوی بی نظیر است
وداع با اسلحه هم یکی از رمانهای بسیار زیبای همینگوی است که حاصل همین تجربه ها ست، جنگ، عشق به عبارتی عاشقی در جنگ

یکی از چالشهای من در رمان خوانی این است که در بعضی مواقع آخر رمانها از خاطرم می رود. این علاوه بر حافظه نه چندان قوی من میتواند علتهای دیگری داشته باشد ولی آنچه که در اینجا میخواهم بگویم این است که پایان بندی وداع با اسلحه را هیچ زمان فراموش نخواهم کرد و تلخیش در جانم باقی خواهد ماند و همین پایان بندی است که وداع با اسلحه را از یک اثر ادبی خوب به یک شاهکار بدل میکند

ترجمه اثر هم حرف ندارد بسیار شیرین و خواندنی ست

خلاصه اگر میخواهید یک رمان عاشقانه دوست داشتنی بخوانید وداع با اسلحه را از دست ندهید

n  

n    "- Não tens a impressão de ser um criminoso, pois não?
- Não - disse eu. - Quando estou contigo não tenho.
- Tu és um rapaz sem juízo - disse ela -, mas hei de olhar por ti. Não é esplêndido, querido, que eu nem sequer sinta náuseas pela manhã?
- Estupendo!
- Tu não sabes apreciar a esplêndida esposa que tens. Mas não me importo. Hei de arranjar um lugar onde não te possam prender, e então seremos muito felizes.
- Vamos já para lá!
- Sim, querido. Irei para onde quiseres e quando quiseres.
- Não pensemos em nada.
- Está bem."n  

n

Ernest Hemingway nasceu em Julho de 1899, perto de Chicago. Com apenas 19 anos, conseguiu que o exército italiano o aceitasse nas suas fileiras, no contexto da I Guerra Mundial, ocasião em que foi condutor de ambulâncias para a Cruz Vermelha. Por essa altura, terá vivido um amor - possivelmente o seu primeiro amor -, com a enfermeira Agnes von Kurowsky. Tudo isto parece ser a matéria-prima de O Adeus às Armas, volvidos dez anos. Tal como o próprio autor, a sua personagem principal, Frederic Henry, é condutor de ambulâncias no exército italiano, pelo que Hemingway pôde pôr a uso o seu conhecimento da realidade, cultura e particularidades dos italianos (creio ter lido algures que Hemingway dizia apenas escrever sobre aquilo que conhecia bem.).

A senhorita Von Kurowsky, que terá abandonado o nosso jovem autor por outro homem, será a provável inspiração para a enfermeira escocesa Catherine Barkley, com quem Henry se envolve com a guerra como pano de fundo. Também este detalhe tem um fundamento na vida do autor, e ajuda a conferir realismo à narrativa: O Adeus às Armas não tem nada de heróico ou de épico, é apenas o conto de um punhado de humanos enleados na complexa - e incompreensível - teia da guerra e nas provações práticas da mesma (longe das politiquices).

A primeira obra que li de Hemingway foi Na outra Margem, entre as Árvores, publicado em 1950, quando Hemingway tinha 51 anos e, portanto, uma perspectiva diferente (apurada) da guerra, do amor, das mulheres. Considerei-o machista, misógino, aborrecido. Detestei-lhe os diálogos - por um lado povoados daquela pouca coesão caraterística da comunicação oral, por outro lado desconexos ao ponto de me exasperarem. Neste último, conheci um Hemingway com 30 anos, menos cínico, menos áspero, com um toquezinho subtil de humor, mas já com a mesma carga pesada, lúgubre, que parece ser o seu cunho em cada obra.

Neste livro, compreendi-o melhor. Compreendi que um rapaz de 18, 19 anos, partiu voluntariamente para o horror de um conflito Europeu, a um oceano e a um mundo de distância, onde sofreu um ferimento que lhe cravou mais de 200 estilhaços na perna. Não consigo imaginar o susto, a alienação. Tão longe de casa, rodeado de estranhos, cheio da energia da juventude e, no entanto, metido numa cama de hospital. Surge a enfermeira bonita, estrangeira. É tudo muito exótico, ainda para mais o rapaz sobreviveu, está apaixonado e ela retribui. Deve sentir-se invencível, imortal. De repente ela foge com outro. Ele é devolvido ao teatro de guerra. Uma vez terminado o horror, volta a casa com os seus fantasmas, e encontra a América prestes a atirar-se aos loucos anos 20. Tem a cabeça cheia de obuses, de disparos, de baionetas e de granadas, da lama das trincheiras e dos clarões de artilharia, mas ao seu redor estão todos a dançar a dançar o foxtrot.



Resultado? O capitalismo é nojento. As mulheres umas levianas desmioladas. A guerra é tudo o que conhece, e nela há-de debruçar-se uma vez e outra, e ainda assim a guerra nunca faz sentido, em livro algum que escreva. Tudo o que Hemingway sabe é que entra-se na guerra com tudo o que se é e com tudo o que se tem, e que se sai dela despojado de si mesmo. A guerra engole tudo. Engoliu-o, mastigou-o e devolveu-o a um mundo que lhe era estranho e no qual ele se sentia um alienado. Moldou-o para sempre. Não será por acaso que se suicida em 1961, depois de uma vida de controvérsia, suposto abuso de álcool e alguns escândalos. Gostava de gatos - não me posso esquecer que Hemingway gostava dos místicos felinos, que têm tão pouco de bélico.

Gostei muito desta narrativa de guerra, e os diálogos (que ainda assim, por vezes, me parecem repetitivos e sem nexo) são ligeiros e ajudam a avançar nas páginas. Julgo que uma das principais críticas a este romance é que o amor entre Henry e Catherine parece supérfluo. Acabei por (julgar) entender que na guerra se está tão sozinho, mesmo quando rodeado dos "rapazes", que não é difícil apaixonarmo-nos. Fazer planos para os tempos de paz. Estar-se com alguém, na guerra, é como a ilusão de que talvez haja um pouco da nossa essência, do nosso lado emocional, que pode ficar salvaguardado dos horrores quotidianos.

O final tocou-me, validou o romance, principalmente porque o livro segue um mesmo tom, sem grandes altos e baixos mesmo nos momentos de suposto climax emocional. Creio que Hemingway dirigiu muito bem o tom nesses acontecimentos finais. No fim, a sensação com que se fica é que é a guerra. E não se pode fugir da guerra.

Mal ele sabia que a guerra ainda havia de persegui-lo por mais 30 anos, até um tiro ir, por fim, alojar-se-lhe na têmpora.

4,5

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms at times represents the author's still-experimental prose, dedicated to simplicity, or "truth" as he attempted to express it, stripping away the veneer of language by concentrating on a repetition, diction & rhythm that would "evoke the physical quality of the object or experience that is being observed." It is also an often frustratingly monochromatic look at the things that matter most in this novel: war, love & death. However, for those who persevere & settle into the cadence of the novel, the result can be quite exceptional.



This is the story of an American, Lt. Frederic Henry, often called "Tenente" by the Italians in his midst, wounded during the early stages of WWI, before his country entered the war and of the woman he falls in love with after an initial ambivalence, Catherine Barkley, a nurse who tends to him as he undergoes operations & rehabilitation that will lead to further wartime duty in Italy. Because their love affair is often the center of a reader's focus, it is easy to overlook Hemingway's commentary on the almost constant peril & the random violence of war:

I ate the end of my piece of cheese & took a swallow of wine. Through the other noise I heard a cough, then came the chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh--there was a flash, as when a blast furnace door is swung open, and a roar that started white & went red and on & on in a rushing wind. I tried to breathe but my breathe would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out & out & out, all the time bodily into the wind.

I went out swiftly, all of myself, and I knew I was dead and that it had all been a mistake to think you had just died. Then I floated, and instead of going on, I felt myself slide back. I breathed & I was back. I heard someone crying. I tried to move but I could not move. I heard the sound of machine-guns & rifles, saw the star-shells go up & burst & float whitely & rockets going up & heard the bombs, all this in a moment.

There is great detail in the battle scenes, something very important to Hemingway, because while he was very impressed by Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage & wished to play homage to it, Crane had never been anywhere near war or a battle, using only his imagination to craft his tale of the Civil War 40 years after it concluded. By contrast, E.H. aimed to frame his WWI story with exacting particulars, based on actual landscapes & battles within Italy, eliciting bravery, occasional cowardice & what he had come to feel was the sheer folly of men fighting a modern war that seldom involved hand-to-hand combat. Or as Lt. Henry puts it:

I could not stand to hear words like sacred, glorious & sacrifice, words that were slapped up on billposters & proclamations. Now, for a long time, I had seen nothing sacred. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity--not abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of regiments & the dates.

Ultimately, Lt. Henry does (almost magically) find his way back from the scourge of a war that has taken a turn against the Italians he is allied with, with Italians in retreat being shot by other Italians for their apparent lack of bravery. He tears two stars off his uniform & strives to blend into life as a civilian, rejoining his beloved Catherine, with both fleeing to safety in Switzerland via rowboat, again almost miraculously. Yes, it is at times preferable to suspend disbelief when reading a novel, as when listening to a fable!



In a way, the love story of Lt. Henry & Catherine seems at times remote when compared to the devastation of battle, until eventually it no longer does; one drifts along with the characters until they become part of the reader's consciousness, at least in my case. Having accepted Hemingway's descriptions of war, one readily signs on to his concept of love. Lt. Henry & Miss Barkley just seem to blend together until they've become a fully bonded couple, even while not formally married.

But there is also Hemingway's view of death, of the deck being stacked against all mortals from the moment of birth, with the best one can hope for not victory, but merely a temporary stalemate. For in the author's words, standing as a kind of Hemingway credo:

The world breaks every one & afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good & the very gentle & 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 won't reveal the conclusion of the novel, except to say that there were 39 attempts at an ending, with the final chosen words being: "After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain." This stands as quintessential Hemingway but also like a parody of the author's prose.



A Farewell to Arms was written almost a century ago & evidences a certain time & place. While there are quite definitely reasons to be intolerant of both Ernest Hemingway & his prose, I am often taken aback by some of the venomous comments at G/R by those with an intense hostility or "visceral hatred" (as one reader phrased it) for the author & therefore everything the Nobel laureate wrote, much of which conveys color & energy in a manner that can seem overly simple but which is deceptively so, with the tempo of the language an important part of the story.

*My version of the novel includes a "personal forward" by Patrick Hemingway, the author's son and a "new introduction" by Sean Hemingway, his grandson. **Among the images within my review are: Ernest Hemingway crafting a story; an Italian WWI recruitment poster; an image of a young E.H. & his WWI nurse/love-interest, Agnes von Kurowsky.

Ernest Hemingway takes a lame story, and then he tells it in a boring way.

This is the story of an American serving as a non-combatant ambulance driver in the Italian army during the Great War, the injury he suffered, his lengthy convalescence, relationships and experiences of that war. A story which is inspired by (at least in part) if not exactly portraying Hemingway’s own experiences fulfilling the same role. Apparently this was a period which Hemingway viewed as one of the most formative experiences of his life.

This is the only Hemingway that I have read thus far and chose this one as I’d understood that ‘Farewell to Arms’ was generally viewed as Hemingway at the ‘height of his literary powers’. That being the case, I had cautiously high expectations – unfortunately most of which were not fulfilled.

The book I found to be generally and unfortunately disappointing on most fronts. I struggled to engage with the narrative or (for the most part) the characters. The prose I found to be generally verging on the disinteresting. Maybe it is a lazy comparison, but ‘Farewell to Arms’ came across to me almost like an earlier, weaker Steinbeck – but without his literary strengths, mastery and skill for storytelling.

The most effective and compelling parts of ‘Farewell to Arms’ I found to be the relationships and scenes between Henry, Catherine, Rinaldi and the Priest – these at least had a certain air of authenticity about them (in spite of Catherine’s occasionally bizarre depiction as ‘half-crazy’) as well as the closing passages – which in themselves existed as the result of the war, but in themselves are depicted as entirely separate from the war.

If there was any semblance of portraying the heroism, futility and savagery etc of war then this was for the most part lost or absent – at least for me.

Published in the same year as Remarque’s ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ (sometimes cited as the ‘best war novel of all time’ – understandably) – ‘Farewell to Arms’ does not bear comparison and maybe shouldn’t be compared. Although both books were published in the same year and the broader subject matter of the Great War is the same – they don’t attempt to tell anything like the same story. However… whilst Remarque produced a staggering work of literary near/genius, Hemingway came up with a novel which is considered altogether more ‘modern’ in style and construction. The problem for me is that ‘A Farewell to Arms’ is ultimately neither moving, nor beautiful, nor harrowing, nor engaging, nor for the most part thought provoking.

Perhaps Hemingway readers out there can recommend some of his other works which might restore my hopes in Hemingway; based on ‘Farewell to Arms’ however, I do not feel inclined at this stage to explore the rest of his output.

Apparently the title; ‘Farewell to Arms’ is in itself a pun – although I think neither funny, nor clever nor ironic – perhaps I missed something?

Overall then – despite some engaging and effective passages, some memorable quotes and possibly ahead of its time terms of being ‘modern’ (?) – ‘Farewell to Arms’ is ultimately however, underwhelming, fails to engage and for the most part lacks a sense and feeling of any real authenticity.

I've generously given a three star rating...only just.

Not much of a story here, and very much a downer. I have also read The Sun Also Rises and from what I can tell so far, Hemingway does not really tell a story, he just writes about a series of events without a beginning, climax, or end. The events are interesting, but I am left feeling like I just read about a few weeks/months in someone's life and these are the things that happened to him. It would be like me writing a book about my life over the past few months. Some interesting things have happened, but not a complete story.

SPOILER

Also, the end if this is a depressing cliffhanger. No resolution, just the end - and the main character is pretty apathetic about it. Weird!

I just finished it, and I'm disappointed. And not only disappointed; I'm also bothered by it. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at Hemingway's one-dimensional, sexist portrayal of Catherine Barkley, having read much of his other work, but somehow I still am. Put simply, Catherine is a ridiculous figure, and it's no fault of her own. Hemingway gives her no opportunity to sound like anything more than a half-crazy, desperate, fawning caricature with no real desires or opinions of her own. How many times must I read lines like, "I'll say just what you wish and I'll do what you wish and then you will never want any other girls, will you?" issue from her lips? Does Hemingway believe women think and talk like this, or does he mean to make his female characters sound like would-be wife-pets?

(I just read a review below that describes Henry and Catherine's dialogue as 'incantations,' the point being that the two, especially Catherine, are trying to will themselves to be happy despite an over-whelming sense of despair. It's an interesting point,and definitely makes reading the scenes with the two of them more palatable. But as much as I'd like to think that that was what Hemingway was going for, I don't know...)

As for the rest of the book, I suppose an argument could be made for its "ground-breaking" sexual frankness or for the necessarily graphic depictions of the front, and I'll buy that. There are, after all, a number of great moments. Still, it's hard to accept the canonization this book as THE central WWI novel and ignore the fact that one of its main characters is very poorly written, perhaps intentionally so.

My second book by Ernest Hemingway. I liked this so much that I cried while finally closing the book.

It must be the way Hemingway used his magic: the vivid descriptions of his locale. The war torn Italian picturesque villa and the use of rain as metaphor for hardship. The ying-yang kind of story: the "man's man" virile American Tenente and the whimsical English-woman Catherine. The contrast between these two lovers is so opposite that's akin to the sun and moon that sometimes exist together in a dreamy late afternoon sky before everything turns dark. However, in the end, the moon ceased to shine and the sun tried to light up the sky but it was raining and the novel ended sad and the sun, being alone, was still lonely. This image was the reason why I cried.

Apart from that sad ending, I also did not enjoy Catherine's delivery of dialogues particularly when she talked to her lover. Their conversations felt like childlike and immature. Also, my edition of this book has so many typographical errors. Paging Arrow Books, the publisher. Please hire a good proofreader. You are doing a great disservice to an otherwise exceptional literary work.

I finally read something more from Hemingway besides the damn fish book! For some reason I was prepared to be bored and/or annoyed, but other than some corny period dialogue and a doormat leading lady, I found this to be cynical, suspenseful and poignant. As in war, there can be no happy endings in life, and the catastrophic fall that I felt was coming for these people from very early in the novel came fast and hard and it got to me. In the end I felt as gutted as the aftermath of a battle.

That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.