Ernest Hemingway’s poetry is likely to be
read primarily by those, diminishing in number these last few decades, who
sufficiently favor his fiction to seek even relatively insubstantial new light
that might illuminate his novels and stories.
The lyric oeuvre is slender, all right.
His editor has eked out eighty-eight short bits by including high school
compositions, while he published maybe twenty-five poems during his life,
including others in letters. Apart from
the small quantity of work, even a Hemingway enthusiast would be unlikely to
make any great claims for these pieces, many of which seem to have been taken
lightly by their own author. Yet they
are revealing in a way that tells less about Hemingway as an individual than about
the nature of the modern avant-garde, the values and uses of an artistic bohemia,
and the development of the concept of “hip.”
Reading these poems with a bit of distance
from their composition, one conceives not so much a specific persona behind
them, but rather a type, the young and rebellious artist. While, of course, a good many details have
dated, the flavor, the tone has much in common with the readings I have
attended my entire life from hearing the Beats at Chicago’s Big Table Readings
sixty years ago through my Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series
lasting twenty-one years in the Hudson Valley.
Poetry on the page tends to differ from that which is meant to be performed,
but, even apart from these generic differences, Hemingway’s poems exemplify the
attitudes that have come to be associated not with art as a whole, but with an
artistic “underground.”
Though the literary historian more
commonly views the expatriate writers of the ‘twenties as individuals, they
contributed as well to a collective scene that celebrated the values associated
with artistic bohemias: experimentalism in art and radicalism in politics and
morals. Such milieux, while in part
traceable far back in time, have been well-defined since the Romantic Age. While each artist produced individual works
with unique characteristics, many also contributed or assented to the formation
of a counter-cultural paradigm.
Readings by writers who consider
themselves adversaries of the established culture take place not at
universities but in cafes, bars, and living room salons. A goal at such gatherings, apart from the
delectation of art, is the creation of a community sub-culture. For the last two hundred years such milieux
have been called bohemias. [1] Radicalism
in these settings not only suggests challenges to social, political, religious,
and aesthetic orthodoxies both as proposals and as pure style. The writers’ posture of revolt appeals to the
expected readership all though it may be detached from any possibility of actual
adoption.
An embattled contrarian protest in fact
derives its energy and drama from its not being accepted by the majority. The desire to “épater les bourgeois”
[2] can be a motive in itself, with the potential to inspire both Baudelaire’s
in-your-face dandyism, Whitman’s casual open-collared workman’s dress, or punk safety-pin in the ear. I recall observing at the first live poetry
readings I attended that the greatest audience response was regularly generated
by transgressive lines, either sexually explicit, politically revolutionary, or
aesthetically outré.
Fifty years later, at one of my own Poetry on the Loose events, an
artist displayed his naked rear as part of his performance. The gesture was meant to offend, a direct
descendant of Jarry’s Ubu Roi, though in Jarry’s time the opening word
was sufficient to cause the play to be banned.
An ambience similar to such live venues
may be constructed from the content of journals as well. Hemingway published many of his poems in
“little magazines” which cultivated the creation of a community of those
critical of the majority culture such as Margaret Anderson’s The Little
Review and Der Querschnitt, founded by Alfred Flechtheim and later
edited by Hans von Wedderkop.
The very name of The Little
Review highlights its dissent from social norms. The first issue proclaims the journal’s
intention to pursue “that untrammeled liberty which is the life of Art.” In case any reader should mistake the editor’s
intentions, she later included the slogan “Making No Compromise with the Public
Taste” beneath the title. [3] She
serialized Joyce’s Ulysses, losing a censorship trial over the excerpts.
[4] The poet whose work appeared in The
Little Review most often was the outrageous Baroness Elsa von
Freytag-Loringhoven whose work was often highly sexual as well as seeming to
some incoherent. In its pages frequent
contributor Emma Goldman advocated not only anarchism but sexual freedom as
well.
Though European and focused centrally on
visual art with oblique and satiric references to politics, Der Querschnitt
also insisted on its radical loyalties, publicizing innovative artists such as
Klee, Chagall, and Max Ernst whose “Dada est mort, vive dada!” appeared
in January of 1921. The editors included
coverage of boxing tournaments as well as of the most significant developments
in art. Its tone is suggested by the claim
in its subscription promotion in 1923 that the journal had correspondents in
“the great centers of Europe and America and among Negroes and Eskimos.” It published as poetry Salvation Army songs
and the “the war cry of the famous All Blacks', the Maori hakka, of New
Zealand’s Rugby team” in the same issue with a song about Jesse James from
Harry Archer’s musical revue. [5]
Hemingway’s poetic contributions to these
journals were in many ways discontinuous from his fiction, but most exhibit the
characteristics of bohemian art: transgressive material: sexual, political,
religious, and aesthetic, suggesting a general bent toward the Dionysiac in
preference to the Apollonian in spite of a certain cynicism, and an insider
hipness implying a coterie with privileged insight. While the poem’s editor Nicholas Gerogiannis
says that “the poems reveal Hemingway himself rather than a fictional
counterpart” [6], their persona is in fact less the author as an individual
than a projection of the generic bohemian artist. The significance of the poetry’s outlaw pose
is evident in the title of the earliest collection of his poetry, The
Suppressed Poems of Ernest Hemingway. [7]
The same emphasis is sounded when
Hemingway refers to his poems in Querschnitt as “dirty,” writing to John
Dos Passos “the ‘Schnitt also publishing a book of my dirty poems . . . Have
you got any dirty poems you want me to sign? Jeeze I wish you were here to
write a few good prurient poems for me because that is now my only source of
income.” [8] His off-hand attitude
distinguishes these poems from the center of his serious literary work. After this claim that the poems are merely a
source of income and asking Dos Passos to contribute, he jocularly implies that
his wife Hadley was the author of some of them.
In spite of this off-handed attitude,
Hemingway thought enough of many of his poems to retain them, revise them, and
to publish a good many during his life.
Still, they have found few admirers (though Wallace Stevens was one), particularly
in contrast to his enormous popular success and substantial critical reputation
toward the end of his life. Many are
occasional and seem very casual, tossed off while doing his more significant
work. Others are written for those in
his personal circle, including allusions meaningless to the general
public. A good share are satirical or
otherwise humorous, even whimsical.
Perhaps the most pervasive attitude they project is a devil-may-care, insouciant
bohemianism, reflecting transgressive attitudes in a cheeky rebellion more willing
to sound flippant than grave.
The simplest device to indicate
transgressive counter-cultural attitudes is the use of vulgar language. Taboos which have since diminished were
through Hemingway’s life strict enough that his use of obscene, scatological,
and racist language was still shocking. Now
that politicians and celebrities routinely use formerly tabooed expressions, it
is difficult to realize the offense originally caused by words such as “cunts,”
(“Sequel”). He managed to include
“shit,” “fuck,” and cocksuckers,” all in a single poem, “The Defense of
Luxembourg.” Whereas other writers
pushing the boundaries of censorship were quite serious about their themes – D.
H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and even, I would include, Henry Miller, Hemingway seems
to indulge in what looks like juvenile play.
In “The Soul of Spain with McAlmon and Bird the Publishers” everything
is “the shit” and his style is half Gertrude Stein and half restroom graffiti:
“Home is where the art is, home is where the fart is,/ let us fart and artless
fart in the home.” In “The Road to Avallon” he makes, perhaps, a
bit more sense.
Dogs must shit as
well as men
I like dogs
better
Say: Amen
He likewise engages in ethnic jibes,
referring, for instance, to “wops” in “d’Annunzio,” “nigger” in “The Road to Avallon,” and making
thoughtless remarks about Jews in “[The rail ends do not meet . . .].” Worse, he ridicules Dorothy Parker’s suicide
attempts in “To a Tragic Poetess” and Scott Fitzgerald’s chronic depression in
“Lines to be Read at the Casting of Scott Fitzgerald’s Balls into the Sea from
Eden Roc (Antibes, Alpes Maritime).” (He
spoke of his own depression in “Black-Ass Poem After Talking to Pamela
Churchill” with greater gravitas, a somber tone, and old-fashioned prosody.)
He repeatedly implies a free attitude
toward sexual relations, joking about gonorrhea in “Oklahoma,” and declaring “FOR
THE HARLOT HAS A HARDLOT.” When he
announces an intention to aim at monogamy since he is “in love,” he sounds
still ecstatic.
I’m off’n wild wimmen
An Cognac
An Sinnin’
For I’m in loOOOOOOOve.
The ethnocentrism implied by his use of
racial epithets does not extend to conventional patriotism. In the poems concerning war, a deep cynicism
prevails. In “To Good Guys Dead” he
says, “they sucked us in.” His “Riparto
d’Assalto” is almost reminiscent of Wilfred Owen, apart from its more casual
structure and image of “a “warm and soft and sleepy whore.”
Grey, cold, bitter, sullen ride --
To splintered pines on the Grappa side
At Asalone, where the truck-load died.
A similar attitude is evident in
“Champs d’Honneur” which notes “Soldiers never do die well” and proceeds then
to specifics.
Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch
All the world
roars red and black,
Soldiers smother in a ditch;
Choking through
the whole attack.
Never nationalistic, his poems
about war insist on drunkenness and death as in “To Chink Whose Trade is
Soldiering,” and “[Some day when you are picked up . . .]”.
The seriousness of what might seem
political poems in part do not survive the general tone. One poem, “[In a Magazine . . .]”, which
describes police brutality, mingles that theme with belligerence toward the
“Hun,” though the persona notes that he prefers his adversaries “unarmed.” A poem dedicated “To Will Davies” (poet and
“Super-tramp” William Henry Davies) seems to address an unequal justice system,
capital punishment, and racism, but concludes with a distracting throwaway jocular
reference to performer Bert Williams. His
observations on America often go no deeper than playful fancy, as when he says
“They read the Saturday Evening Post./ And believe in Santa Claus.” and “they
wear B. V. D.’s all the year round” in “I Like Americans by a foreigner.”
Hemingway also defines his
counter-cultural pose with irreligious remarks.
In “Chapter Heading” he says he “has danced to devils’ tunes” before
“shivering home to pray,” thus serving “one master in the night,/ Another in
the day.” The church is for him an
occasion for a joke. In “[God is away
for the summer . . .]” he whimsically comments that the minister’s summer
vacation has caused to absence of the divine, and his “Neothomist Poem”
includes a line-break pause worthy of a stand-up comedian: “The Lord is my
shelter, I shall not/ want him for long.” He later glossed the bit by saying it
described “the temporary embracing of the church by literary gents.” [10]
While making a show of spurning
conventional proprieties in language, religion, patriotism, sexuality, and
even, on occasion, human sympathy, he adopted avant-garde rhetoric, closely
imitating Gertrude Stein whose work was ridiculed by many, though the criticism
only increased her celebrity. In a
comment on his description of the Lausanne Peace Conference published as “They
All Made Peace – What is Peace?” in The Little Review, he called Stein’s
style “invaluable for analysing anything” yet referred to his own poem as “a
joke.” [11] In spite of this claim to
levity, how own mature prose style uses repetitions and simple language
doubtless linked to her influence. In “The
Soul of Spain with McAlmon and Bird the Publishers” he imitates Stein, though
sounding careless and flippant while she often seemed measured and quite
serious.
Home is where the art is,
home is where the fart is,
let us fart and artless fart in the home.
Stein’s importance is all the more
impressive since Hemingway’s sexism led him to discount other “poetesses” in
“The Lady Poets With Footnotes” which dismisses the leading female poets of the
day.
It may be that Stein’s position as doyenne of the avant-garde
attracted Hemingway at least as much as her specific model. His poems include a number of friendly
references to Ezra Pound though his fiction owes nothing whatever to the older
poet. In “The Soul of Spain . . .” published
in Querschnitt he claims that “We have done a monument to Ezra,” in “The
Age Demanded” he tropes on “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” and in “Kipling” and “[I
think that I have never trod . . .]” he includes Provençal envois as a gesture
toward Pound.
As the role of Pound suggests, what
Hemingway valued was in part the coterie character of the literary set with its
“hip” insider references. He considered
the smallness of the small magazines that published his work as evidence of
their integrity, and he defended those in which he appeared against their
rivals. When Pound was trying to
convince Robert McAlmon of the Dial to publish Eliot’s “The Wasteland”
he also submitted Hemingway’s “Killed Piave – July 8 – 1918,” the rejection of
which generated made Hemingway an enemy of the journal.
The bohemian attitude led him in any event
to discount critics in general, particularly what he perceived as establishment
critics whom he attacked not with an aesthetic defense, but by impugning their
virility. Thus, Edmund Wilson’s 1930
introduction to In Our Time elicited his observation in “[Little Mr.
Wilson . . .]” that in Wilson’s “pedantic” novel I Thought of Daisy “no
one liked to screw,” and a general complaint about “All the ball-less critics/
all their cuntless wives.” Contrasting
the vigorous creative type with the effete intellectual, he insists in “Poem”
that his life experience has given him something “that cannot be taken from us
by an article/ or abolished by a critical agreement of professors.”
We’ll write books.
They will not read them
but their children may
if they have children
In “[Little drops of grain alcohol
. . .]’’ he wrote, “Mr. Hemingway now wears glasses/ better to see to kiss the
critics’ asses.”
Hemingway’s attitude in these poems is not
only anti-academic, it is flippant. The
irreverence and willful immaturity of many of his lines justify the use of the
term “smart-alecky.” Consider, for
instance, this excerpt from “[Little drops of grain alcohol . . .]”: “Mr.
Hemingway now wears glasses/ better to see to kiss the critics’ asses.” Or this from “[And everything the author
knows . . . ].”
And everything the author knows
He shows and shows and shows and shows
his underclothes
are more important than the sum.
Or, in “Part Two of The Soul of Spain . . .”, “The wind blows and it does not snows look at the bull with his bloody nose.”
His “Valentine” with the line “stick them up your asses, lads” was published in the final number of The Little Review for which Margaret Anderson, in a gambit to overtop avant-gardism itself, had specifically asked for manuscripts which were not literature. Yet some of his poems are far less bohemian. Those addressed to his wife Mary, for instance, sound almost sincere: “First Poem to Mary in London,“ “Poem to Mary (Second Poem),” “Poem to Miss Mary, and “Travel Poem.” Several if the war poems such as Captives” are similarly straightforward as is his lighter bit “To Crazy Christian” about his cat. Some poems -- “Flat Roofs” and “Bird of Night” -- come to mind) are unironic Imagism. “On Weddynge Gyftes” is a piece of journalistic entertainment.
Nonetheless, the bent of his 88 Poems
is predominately bohemian. The poems are
significant in establishing an adversarial relation to the received ideas of
his day by mocking patriotism, religion, sexual morality, and the traditional
standards for art. He practiced rigorous
rewriting for his fiction; he said he had rewritten the ending to Farewell
to Arms thirty-nine times [12] and pronounced that “the only writing is
rewriting” [13] most often approached his poetry in a casual fashion, because
that off-handedness was a central part of his poems’ significance. He found in bohemia a subculture that would
support his artistic ambitions and he established his credibility within it by
rebelling against social norms of every sort.
The themes that dominated his major fiction are largely suppressed,
though both combat and bullfighting are themes of the poetry. The primary meaning, though, was to present
his bona fides for membership in the artistic bohemia of his age,
reinforcing the gap between writers and the general public and fostering an
attitude of hipness, implying the superiority of their subcultural view.
1. Popularized by Henri Murger's stories Scènes de la vie de bohème (1845), the term is first used in English in chapter 65 of Thackery’s Vanity Fair which appeared in Punch in July 1848.
2. Often attributed
to Baudelaire, the term and very similar expressions were used by a number of
writers including in 1854 by Aristippe Felix Bernier de Maligny in Nouveau
Manuel Théatral: Théorique et Pratique (p. 85), in 1855 by Privat
d’Anglemont (in the form “Je les ai épatés, les bourgeois”) in Paris
Anecdote (1855) p. 282), and in 1860 by Alexandre Dumas (père) in Le
père la ruine, p. 186.
3.
The line first appears in October of 1917.
4.
Ten years later, Random House invited another prosecution by importing
the book. Though the case had to be
pursued to the Supreme Court, it was decided in the most significant censorship
litigation for a generation to be publishable, Judge Woolsey drily commenting “nowhere
does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.”
5.
Volume V, no. 4.
6.
Introduction, 88 Poems, edited by Nicholas Gerogiannis, xi.
7.
Published in 1929 Paris by The Library of Living Poetry. It is undoubtedly the implication of
naughtiness in the title that caused this collection to be pirated in the
fifties and again in the seventies.
8.
Letter of 22 April, 1925 in Selected Letters ed. Carlos Baker (p.
158).
9.
In Nicholas Gerogiannis’ edition of Hemingway’s complete poems, 88
Poems, those which are untitled are identified by the opening words followed
by an ellipsis and enclosed in brackets.
10. Michael Reynolds, Hemingway: The Homecoming,
note 50, p. 234.
11. See 88 Poems, edited by Nicholas
Gerogiannis, 141. This poem was
nonetheless admired by Louis Zukovsky who included it in his “Program:
Objectivist 1931” manifesto as a model worthy of imitation.
12. George Plimpton, “An Interview with Ernest
Hemingway” quoted William A. Glasser, “A Farewell to Arms,” The Sewanee
Review Vol. 74, No. 2 (Spring, 1966).
13. “Art of Fiction No. 21,” the Paris
Review, issue 18, 1958.
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