Tea at Trianon: Hemingway at Sea

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Hemingway at Sea

A review of several books by Papa Hemingway.

Three recent books in that tide of Hemingway iconography present different glimpses of him, and imply different relationships between his life and his art. “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway,” covering the years 1907-22, is the first of more than a dozen planned volumes, collecting just about everything he ever wrote that was not meant for publication. And, to be clear, those of us who admire his fiction should take a moment to acknowledge that these letters were not intended for us. To his executors: “I hereby request and direct you not to publish, or consent to the publication by others, of any such letters.” We are snooping. If you love the artist’s work, if you respect what you think you know of the man, then you can honor his wishes and stop reading right here. On the other hand, Pauline, the second of his four wives, burned her share of the letters, and their son Patrick said of that decision: “At least she was logical. She didn’t want her correspondence to be immortalized. That was the way to deal with it.”

The existence of some of these documents (predating Hemingway’s fame) is close to a miracle, and “The Letters” is without question a spectacular scholarly achievement. Letters about boyhood fishing trips in Michigan that resemble his early Nick Adams stories; notes passed in class; brave and boastful letters home from the hospital in Italy after his wounding in World War I with descriptions of artillery that prefigure “A Farewell to Arms”; courtship letters to his first wife; gossipy letters from Paris describing the literary world he was discovering: these are extraordinary. From 1922, to Sherwood Anderson: “Gertrude Stein and me are just like brothers. . . . Joyce has a most goddamn wonderful book. . . . I’ve been teaching Pound to box with little success.” Sigh. (Read entire article.)