ERNEST HEMINGWAY
57
pie's courage and proper self-love, making them "reasonable," which
is
to
say dull and
false.
There is no need
to
point out how erroneous
his
view would have been were it really mind that was in question,
but in the long romantic tradition of the attitude it never really
is
mind that is in question but rather a dull overlay of mechanical nega–
tive proper feeling, or a falseness of feeling which people believe to
be
reasonableness and reasonable virtue. And when we think how
quickly "mind" capitulates in a crisis, how quickly, for example, it
accommodated itself to the war and served it and glorified it, revul–
sion from it and a turning to the life of action-reduced, to be sure,
to athleticism: but skilful physical effort is perhaps something intel–
lectuals too quickly dismiss as a form of activity-can be the better
understood. We can understand too the insistence on courage, even
on courage deliberately observed in its purity: that is, when it is at
the service of the most sordid desires, as in "Fifty Grand."
This, then, was Hemingway's vision of the world. Was it a com–
plete vision? Of course it was not. Was it a useful visioJil? That de–
pended.
If
it was true, it was useful-if we knew how t6 use it. But
the use of literature is not easy. In our hearts most of us are Platonists
in
the matter of art and we feel that we become directly infected by
what we read; or at any rate we want to be Platonists, and we carry
on a certain conviction from our Tom Swift days that literature pro–
vides chiefly a means of identification and emulation. The Platonist
view is not wholly to be dismissed; we
do
in a degree become directly
infected by
art;
but the position is too simple. And we are further
Platonistic in our feeling that literature must be religious: we want
our attitudes formulated by the tribal bard. This, of course, gives to
literature a very important function. But it forgets that literature has
never "solved," though it may perhaps provide part of the data for
eventual solutions.
With this attitude we asked, Can Hemingway's people speak
only
with difficulty? and we answered, Then it surely means that he
thinks
people should not speak. Does he find in courage the first of
virtues? Then it surely means that we should be nothing but cou–
rageous. Is he concerned with the idea of death and of violence?
Then
it must mean that to him these are good things.
In short, we looked for an emotional leader. We did not con–
ceive Hemingway to be saying, Come, let us look at the world to–
ðer. We supposed him to be saying, Come, it is your moral duty
to
be
as my characters are. We took the easiest and simplest way of
using
the artist and decided that he was not the "man" for us. That
he
was a man and a Prophet we were certain; and equally certain
that
he was not the "man" we would want to be or 'the Prophet
