58
PARTISAN REVIEW
who could lead us. That, as artist, he was not concerned with being a
"man" did not occur to us. We had, in other words, quite over–
looked the whole process of art, overlooked style and tone, symbol
and iffiplication, overlooked the obliqueness and complication with
which the artist may criticize life, and assumed that what Heming–
way saw or what he put into his stories he wanted to have exist
in
the actual world.
In short, the criticism of Hemingway came down to a kind of
moral-political lecture, based on the assumption that
art
is--or should
be-the exact equivalent of life. The writer would have to be strong
indeed who could remain unmoved by the moral pressure that was
exerted upon Hemingway. He put away the significant reticences of
the artist, opened his heart like "a man," and the flat literalness, the
fine, fruity social idealism of the latest novel and the play are the
result.
The Fifth Column
is difficult to speak of. Summary is always
likely to be a critical treachery, but after consulting the summaries of
those who admire the work and regard it as a notable event, it seem.'
fair to say that it is the story of a tender-tough American hero with
the horrors, who does counter-espionage in Madrid, though every–
body thinks he is just a playboy, who fears that he will no longer do
his work well if he continues his liaison with an American girl chiefly
remarkable for her legs and her obtuseness; and so sacrifices love and
bourgeois
p\~asure
for the sake of duty. Hemingway as a playwright
gives up his tools of suggestion and tone and tells a literal story-an
adventure story of the Spanish war, at best the story of the regenera–
tion of an American Pimpernel of not very good intelligence.
It is this work which has been received with the greatest satis–
faction by a large and important cultural group as the fulfilment and
vindication of Hemingway's career, as a fine document of the Spanish
struggle, and as a political event of significance, "a sign of the times,"
as one reviewer called it. To me it seems none of these things. It
does not vindicate Hemingway's career because that career in its
essential parts needs no vindication; and it does not fulfill Heming–
way's career because that career has been in the service of exact if
limited emotional truth and this play is in the service of fine feelings.
Nor can I believe that the Spanish war is represented in any good
sense by a play whose symbols are so sentimentally personal* and
• In fairness to Hemingway the disclaimer of an important intention which he makes in his
Preface should be cited. Some people, he says, have objected that his play does not present "the
nobility and dignity of the cause of the Spanish people.
It
does not attempt to. It will take
many plays and novels to do that, and the best ones will be written after the war is over."
And
he goes on: "This is only a play about counter espionage in Madrid. It has the defecu or
having been written in war time, and if it has a moral it is that people who work for certain
organizations have very little time for home life." I do not think that this exempu the play
from severe judgment by those who dislike it, just "" I think that those who admire it have
a right to see in
it
as they do, a "aign of the timrs."
