ONE LAW FOR THE LION
caught. .Notin.
Spain~
No, they. are .Hemingway's fish, as .
u.n~
changing as those of Braque. In Italy-
, .
In the bed of the river there ·were pebbles and ·boulders,
dry
and
white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and
blue in the channels.
But no fish. No, the next fish would be the Big one, and
come from the sea. The only Hemingway fish that might be
said to have got away.
This is refinement, not repetition. A testing of the blade
on the chosen material, as a bullfighter teSts his capework on
the bull. On this material the blade seldom loses its edge. In
time, understandably, the materials are chosen to suit the blade.
It becomes the function of the style, not the author, to choose
the scene, select the cast, and speak the appropriate words. The
simplicity lies in the style, not in the material. The Spanis
language is used as a simplifying agent where the situation is
often complex. Hemingway knew as well as his friend Fitzgerald
that "the very rich are different"-very different indeed, but
such a fact did not suit the dictates of the Hemingway style.
Complicated types enter this world only to lose their complica-
' tions. Man must appear simple so that Nature will emerge
I
complex. The restoration of NATURE, writ large, a paradise
lost, would seem to be the passion behind Hemingway's reduc–
tion of man: the raw material he was able to supply himself.
But
whether Nature likes it or not, Man too is a piece of Nature,
and it is why his disillusion is so often grained with hope.
We are a young nation, but premature loss of creative power
is
already an old American custom. The exceptions have been
among the exiles, such as Eliot anQ Henry
James.
Foreign
ai~
helped, but did not do as much for Hemingway. The destructi"e
agent was of his own invention-an inflexible style. We see it
in
the map,
in
the legend, as well as in the books. Several yean;
