442
PARTISAN REVIEW
North Italian Red is a father of a family and a good worker six days out
of seven." Seven years before
The Fifth Column,
nine before
For Whom
the Bell Tolls,
Hemingway expressed a desire to visit the revolutionary
scene in Madrid. That he studied the scene intensely is borne out by his
letter to John Dos Passos listing the twenty-three different political par–
ties "steaming up" the countryside. Hemingway even lamented that
there was really no market for what he knew about the present Spanish
situation. But even had there been, Hemingway would not have com–
pleted a fictional portrayal. As early as 1923 he had attempted a fic–
tional story about revolution, but had abandoned the project because he
did not think he knew enough about the topic. Two years later he made
another attempt, but broke it off before completing the first page.
By the supposed awakening period, he had spent fifteen years study–
ing and visiting revolutions. He had the subject matter and now knew
enough about the topic to show at least the tip of the iceberg. Thus, the
timing of the novels
To Have and Have Not
and
The Fifth Column
did
not represent the sudden political awareness of Ernest Hemingway;
instead these novels reveal that he had now acquired confidence in his
subject matter.
What of his embracing and then abandoning left-wing activism? It is
true that Hemingway was more politically active in the late 1930S, but
only the publicity of these activities had changed, not the sentiments
behind them. He had not merely spent the last fifteen years studying rev–
olutions and revolutionaries; in some cases, he was a supporter. He had
been a sympathetic chronicler of the Italian Communists in the 1920S
and an early critic of Mussolini. He supported the overthrow of the
Cuban dictator Machado in 1933.
In
1934, he financed a benefit show
for the Communist revolutionary Luis Quintanilla.
In
this period, he
expressed his sentiments in some of the same venues he would in the
"awakening" period-fundraising and reporting. The difference
between the two periods was that by the late 1930S the journals he was
reporting for were more frankly partisan
(New Masses, Pravda)
and he
was now engaging in a new venue for old sentiments-the speech. The
antifascism of his speech was not due to the influence of the Popular
Front. He had warned against Hitler for years, when the CPUSA was
dismissing the Nazis.
What of the politics in the literary works produced from 1935 to '39?
If
Wilson's model is correct, then
For Whom the Bell Tolls,
which the
Left saw as representing Hemingway's break with Stalinism, should dif–
fer significantly from his literary efforts in this period. The novels begin–
ning with
To Have and Have Not
and ending with
For Whom the Bell
