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| Ernest Hemingway |
| 海明威 |
| 圖片來源：www.jimpoz.com/quotes/ speaker.asp?speakerid=446 |
| 主要文類：Novel |
| 資料提供者：Ron Tranquilla;Evelyn Sung/宋怡緻 |
| 關鍵字詞：American Literature Survey 2; Major American Novelists |
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1899-1961
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Evelyn Sung/宋宜緻
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 見習期：新聞業、戰時經驗、作家
婚姻
著作：短篇小說、著名小說、其他
寫作風格
晚年
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見習期
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新聞業
高中時期的海明威，在校內的表現堪稱文武雙全，不但是管絃樂團的大提琴手，也是足球隊、游泳隊的成員，同時他也為學校的報刊和雜誌撰寫文章。儘管如此，海明威高中畢業後並沒有繼續升學，他選擇為當時知名的報社《堪薩斯城星報》 (Kansas City Star ) 工作。《堪薩斯城星報》以直接、記敘但不死板的寫作技巧作為訓練記者的原則，這樣的要求對海明威的寫作風格產生了深遠的影響。
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戰時經驗
一九一八年五月，海明威自願加入紅十字救護隊，並前往義大利前線服役。有一回在執勤時，海明威不顧腿上的傷，將一名傷兵揹至安全地點，事後醫生在他腿上取出了超過二百片的炸彈碎片。彼得•海伊表示，「他是第一個赴義大利戰場，受傷而能存活的美國人。美國各家報社因此將他塑造成英雄。」戰時的經驗，確實對海明威一生有著深遠的影響。在他日後的短篇作品和長篇小說《戰地春夢》中，可見他不時回歸到戰時經驗，尤其是曾經身受重傷的回憶。
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作家
海明威受重傷後，先後在當地醫院和密西根的家中療養。在這段康復期中，海明威以寫作為職志，將戰時所見所聞寫進他的短篇小說，並向當時最受歡迎的雜誌 《週末郵報》 ( Saturday Evening Post ) 等投稿。但由於海明威的家人並不支持他對寫作的興趣，強迫他找一份有穩定收入的工作，他另外又在 《多倫多星報》 ( Toronto Star ) 擔任非正職的記者，撰寫專題報導。海明威精闢的新聞寫作和雜誌上刊出的頗受歡迎的實驗性短篇小說，吸引了作家薛伍德 • 安德生 ( Sherwood Anderson ) 的目光。當時安德生正從巴黎歸國，主動提出願為海明威寫介紹信給移居巴黎的文人。經由安德生的引薦，海明威師承史坦因 ( Gertrude Stein ) 和意象派詩人龐德 ( Era Pound ) 。史坦因本身致力於創造出新的散文寫作風格，她建議海明威寫作時應著重於「重新閱讀和專注」的技巧。而他從意象派詩人龐德那兒學到的，是如何運用精簡的語言和單一的、凝聚的形象，激發讀者情感上的迴響。
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| 婚姻 |
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海明威與海德莉•理察德森於一九二一年結婚，一九二三年育有一子邦比。海明威居住於巴黎那段時間，盡情享受滑雪、釣魚、觀賞鬥牛競技的樂趣，並從這些活動中吸取經驗、獲取創作靈感。然而，照顧小孩的重責大任因此落在海德莉身上，使她不太能像以往一般陪伴海明威從事這些冒險活動。而令海明威耿耿於懷的一件事，是海德莉弄丟了一個公事包，裡面裝有他一九二一至一九二二年間辛苦耕耘的手稿。海明威與海德莉離婚，於一九二六年娶寶琳•菲佛，兩人去過的地方遍佈世界各地，包括蒙大拿州、伊達荷州、古巴、非洲、西班牙、義大利等。一九二八年對海明威是頗具考驗且艱辛的一年。先是寶琳在生兒子派翠克時難產，之後海明威的父親在十二月時，因受不了糖尿病和憂鬱症的折磨，舉槍自盡。父親的死在海明威心中留下了傷痕。一九四零年，海明威與寶琳離婚，再娶瑪薩•霍利格恩。瑪薩是個活躍堅強的戰地記者，她和海明威共同報導西班牙的戰事。但由於瑪薩不願捨自己的事業轉而以海明威的事業為重，在海明威需要她的關注時，仍堅持去外地採訪、撰寫新聞，兩人的婚姻不久即宣告破裂。雖然海明威在二次世界大戰的前期，不但為酒癮所擾，閒歇性的憂鬱症也復發的愈加頻繁，但在一九四四年之前，因為擔任戰地記者的冒險經歷，和另一位女記者瑪莉•華許之間新戀情的滋潤，海明威又回復了往日的活力。瑪莉也因此成為海明威第四任，也是最後一任妻子。
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| 著作 |
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短篇小說
海明威的短篇小說創作逾百篇，主要分為兩個時期：1923-1927，以尼克•亞當、密西根州的人文，和一次大戰時的義大利為主要題材。另一時期是 1933-1936 ，此時期刻畫的人物多半較為成熟，場景的選擇也更為廣泛，擴及非洲及佛羅里達。尼克 • 亞當系列的短篇描述尼克的生活哲學、成長的心路歷程、幼年時期的傷痛和理想破滅帶給尼克的影響，以及那種無法入眠，僅能抓住任何可以助他保持理智的事物的絕望。許多海明威筆下主人翁的心路歷程，都和這系列短篇的主角性格有相符之處。此外，其他短篇諸如〈 謀殺者 〉(The Killers) 、〈 雪山盟 〉(The Snows of Kilimajaro)、〈 一個明亮、潔淨的地方 〉(A Clean, Well-Lighted Place) 和〈The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber 〉都和海明威著名的長篇小說齊名，也是英文文學裡最精煉雋永的短篇。
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著名小說
《旭日又升》( 另譯《妾似朝陽又照君》) The Sun Also Rises (1926 )、《戰地春夢》A Farewell to Arms (1929) 、《戰地鐘聲》For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) 和《老人與海》The Old Man and The Sea (1952) 是海明威長篇小說中的勝選。《旭日又升》是首部描寫移居巴黎的美國人生活的作品。小說呈現了傳統價值觀破滅，快樂主義等新生活態度興起的現象；同時，也表達了當代人目睹西方社會在歐洲大戰的摧殘下，對舊有的和平秩序完全被瓦解、不可復得而深感痛心疾首。《戰地春夢》以主題與寫作技法的巧妙融合、戰爭和愛情兩大主題的緊密鋪陳，被視作海明威藝術價值最高的作品。小說的中心主旨與《旭日又升》相似，旨在表達戰時、戰後在美國和歐洲隨處可感受到的殘敗與絕望，同時展示了「失落的一代」的心境 — 先是心理創傷的形成、理想的破滅、嘲弄的態度，最後是對宗教和傳統能引領他們邁向康莊大道的不信任。
《戰地鐘聲》是海明威規模最大的一部作品。他試圖融入自然、科技、人類的合諧等較大的概念。小說的主人翁依舊展露了海明威偏好的孤獨性格、單獨面對死亡的生命模式。小說不但生動且具有人性關懷，令人印象深刻，最重要的是海明威所要傳達的是意涵更深廣的理念 — 保護自由民主的國家，抵抗法西斯主義的霸權。若說《旭日又升》和《戰地鐘聲》分別是描寫青年人、中年人的小說，那《老人與海》便是一本刻畫人老而飽經風霜的作品。純熟的技巧、不同形式的勇氣、肉體的失敗與精神的勝利、曖曖內含光的自重與內斂、苦難的試驗、和最終心靈的平靜愜意，在在是《老人與海》一書的中心主旨。
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其他
《午後之死》 Death in the Afternoon (1932) 是海明威長篇的敘述性散文寫作，也是英文文學中精湛描述鬥牛競技的作品。海明威試圖讓初學者了解鬥牛對他而言，既不是一個複雜的語言、儀式、戲劇性事件，也不是一種運動，而是一種悲愴的美。 《非洲的青山》 Green Hills of Africa (1935) 是海明威在非小說的散文寫作上，更大幅度的一個嘗試，也是他一九三三年至三四年間在非洲草原上狩獵的個人傳記。在海明威死後才出版的 《流動的饗宴》 A Moveable Feast (1964 ) ，是他追憶一九二一年至一九二六年在巴黎生活的傳記性生活側寫。海明威在此書中對人物和場景、文人的掙扎與成長的精確描寫，展現了更內斂優雅的風格，奠定了他散文大家的地位。除此之外，海明威的作品另有一九三七年寫成的戲劇 《第五縱隊》，該劇於一九四零年被搬上舞台。另有以青年人的幽默、意像表達為主的詩作，和寫給第四任妻子瑪莉的情詩。
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海明威的作品傾向於刻畫嚴酷、理想破滅的世界中，傳統價值觀和新式生活態度的衝突。他筆下的角色往往在拋棄了舊有的價值觀之後，轉而在微忽極微的可能性中尋找立足點，這些立足點即所謂的「行為準則」，可以是鬥牛競技、狩獵、也可以是釣魚。這些可取自於日常生活中的行為準則，在個人面對老化、戰亂、心理挫折的悲劇人生中，幫助個人活的有尊嚴而有意義。雖然很多評論家認為海明威刻意營造個人傳奇形象的傾向，是他寫作品質降低的原因之ㄧ，但他早期作品中那準確、簡潔、紮實、乾淨俐落且客觀的風格，直接表達而非冗長敘述的手法，使他的寫作可媲美一件巧奪天工的藝術品。海明威並不以傳統的散文記敘體和作者的評論來鋪陳他的小說，他擅長用有限的敘事、對話和行動來表達他筆下的角色。他曾自比自己的寫作就像冰山一樣，真正的價值是經由每個細節的堆砌才會顯現出來，而不是僅只顯現於外表。另外，提喻法也是海明威慣用的寫作手法。藉由事物的一部份來象徵整個事物，正如他筆下的人物象徵所有生活在他那個時代的人一樣。在他所謂的「冰山理論」、提喻法、和某些故事裡多重敘事者的運用之下，一個充斥著不確定，安逸和傳統價值蕩然無存，破壞、衝突、死亡無可避免的小說世界，在海明威的筆下誕生。
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| 晚年 |
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海明威的晚年並不好過。他的憂鬱症在一九六零年時惡化，體重時輕時重，對現實世界的認知也斷斷續續。海明威後來被送進醫療院所，診斷出許多病徵，並給予電擊療法治療他的憂鬱症。他畢生對自己所設的標準極高，除非他能比別人強壯、比別的作家優秀、比別的年輕人還能勝任成為好的情人，否則他無法快樂。他無法忍受沒有勝利的生活。一九六一年，為高血壓和憂鬱症所苦的海明威，於伊達荷州的家中舉槍自盡。
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1899-1961
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Writer, novelist, short story writer
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Evelyn Sung/宋宜緻
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| Family Background
Apprenticeship: Journalist War Experiences Writer
Marriage
Writings: Short Stories Major Novels Other Writings
Writing style
Last Years
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Family Background
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Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21, 1899. His father was a country physician, who taught him hunting and fishing, while his mother was a trained opera singer and a strong-willed feminist, who earned more money than her husband by teaching singing. In Hemingway’s youth, his father developed his natural love of sport and outdoor life, whereas his mother cultivated his interest in music and painting. He was led to play the cello and sing in the church choir. He spent his early years largely in combating the repressive feminine influence of his mother and nurturing the masculine influence of his father. Hemingway spent many summers at the family's cabin on Walloon Lake in the northern Michigan, where he often accompanied his father on professional calls. In Michigan, Hemingway found the material for his early fiction—"events of sudden tragedy and pathos endured by the local Indians; the life-and-death consciousness of the hunter and fisherman; and the adept participant and empathic witness that he discovered in himself."
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| Apprenticeship |
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Journalist
Hemingway was very active both in academic activities and in athletic campaigns during his high school years. He played cello in the orchestra, was a member of the football and swimming teams, and wrote for the school’s newspaper and literary magazine. However, instead of attending the college, he took a job with Kansas City Star, the leading newspaper of the period. The Star developed a certain guidebook to train their reporters, requiring direct, declarative, vigorous sentence writing that had a permanent influence on Hemingway’s writing style.
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War Experiences
In May 1918, Heminway volunteered for war duty with the Red Cross ambulance corps and left for service on the Italian front. In one of his duty rounds, he carried a wounded soldier to safety in spite of the injuries in his legs. Later there were over 200 mortar fragments removed from his legs. According to Peter Hays, "He was the first American to be wounded in Italy and survive, and American newspapers made a hero of him." The experiences in the war did shape him forever. He later returned again and again his writing to war experiences and especially to the wound in his short stories and in his novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929).
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Writer
During those months of convalesce in the hospital and with his family in Michigan, he decided to commit himself to fiction writing, wrote short stories based on his war experiences and started to submit short stories to magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, the most popular magazine of the day. However, his family did not support his interest in writing and forced him to find a remunerative job. He therefore worked as a part-time feature writer for Toronto Star. His excellent journalism and some successful experimental short stories in the magazines impressed Sherwood Anderson, who just visited Paris and offered to write letters of introduction to the expatriate writers in Paris. Hemingway therefore studied at the side of Gertrude Stein, who herself was trying to reinvent American prose styles and advised Hemingway to always "begin over again and concentrate" when writing. Besides, Hemingway was also influenced by the poet Era Pound, who was the founder of the imagist movement in poetry, and from whom Hemingway learned to use "economy of language and concentration of a single image" to produce an emotional reaction in the reader.
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Marriage
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Hemingway married Hadley Richardson in 1921 and had a son named Bumby in 1923. Since he had come to Paris, he enjoyed himself in skiing, fishing, and watching bullfights, attaining experiences and inspirations from such activities in the Europe. The responsibility of child-rearing made Hadley become a less adventurous companion than she had once been. A big mistake that Hemingway could not forgive about Hadley was that she lost the briefcase containing all the manuscripts Hemingway had worked on through 1921 and 1922. Hemingway divorced Hadley and in 1926 remarried with Pauline Pfeiffer, who followed Hemingway to different places such as Montana, Idaho, Cuba, Africa, Spain, Italy, and various other points around the world. The year 1928 was an extremely tough year for Hemingway, in which Pauline suffered a traumatic cesarean section in giving birth to their son, Patrick, and in December, Hemingway’s father who suffered from diabetes and depression, committed suicide with a revolver and left him an emotional scar. In 1940, Hemingway divorced Pauline and married Martha Gellhorn, a vibrant and determined reporter with whom he had covered battles in Spain. Their marriage did not last long either, because Martha refused to subordinate her career to his own, insisting on continuing to travel and write when he wanted her attention on him. Although during the early part of the World War II, Hemingway struggled to control his alcoholism and the more frequent bouts of depression that began to haunt him, by 1944 Hemingway had returned to his old form, helped along by his adventures as a war correspondent and by his new romance with another lady journalist, Mary Walsh, his fourth and last wife.
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Short Stories
Hemingway wrote over one hundred short stories in two main periods: 1923-1927, during which he wrote about Nick Adams and other figures in Michigan and Italy in World War I; and 1933-1936, during which he dealt largely with more mature figures in a wider range of settings, including Africa and Florida . By depicting how Nick Adams coped with his life, these Nick Adams' stories were viewed as central works that "provide a psychological history for nearly all of Hemingway's protagonists, a record of trauma and disillusionment that leaves Nick disturbed at an early age, unable to sleep at night, desperately clinging to anything that can help him retain his tenuous grasp on sanity." Besides, a few of other stories—including "The Killers," "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"—are as well-known as Hemingway's best novels and are some of the finest stories in English.
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Major Novels
The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and The Sea (1952) are Hemingway's best novels. The Sun Also Rises is the first novel to depict American expatriates' life in Paris in the 1920s. The novel combines disillusionment with traditional values with a new hedonistic attitude, and epitomizes a generation by portraying the anguish of the Western world over the European war, over the shattered illusion of peaceful order that had been irrevocably lost. A Farewell to Arms , with its perfect blend of subject and methods, the tightly knitted themes of war and romance, is often considered Hemingway's most artistic work. Similarly, its themes manifest the destruction and despair pervading Europe and America during and after the war, and demonstrates the emotional condition of the lost generation—"the inception of their psychological trauma, the beginning of their disillusionment and cynicism, the end of their faith in religion and convention as guides to fulfillment ."
In For Whom the Bell Tolls , the longest and most ambitious work, Hemingway strove to weave grand themes of nature, technology, and the unity of mankind. His truer, deeper preoccupations were still with the solitary man proving his mettle and facing death alone. It is a great novel, humane, vivid, intensely memorable, yet it does serve for a larger idea—the protection of a democratic country against the forces of Fascism. If The Sun Also Rises is a novel of youth, and For Whom the Bell Tolls a novel of middle age, then The Old Man and the Sea is a novel of experience gained over the years. The Old Man and the Sea "is a story of skill, of all kinds of courage, of defeat in the flesh, of victory in the spirit, of pride humbled and self-respect earned, of suffering, and of final great peace of mind."
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Other Wrtings
Death in the Afternoon (1932), Hemingway's first extended work of expository prose, presents the finest discussion of bullfighting in English. It is a handbook of bullfighting which "attempts to make intelligible for the novice the complex language, ritual, and drama of what Hemingway regarded as a tragedy rather than a sport." Green Hills of Africa (1935) represents a further experiment in nonfiction prose, serving as an essentially autobiographical account of an African safari Hemingway enjoyed in 1933-1934. The posthumous A Moveable Feast (1964) , a collection of autobiographical sketches covering his life in Paris from 1921 to 1926, established Hemingway among the masters of expository prose "for its sharp descriptions of scene and character, its record of literary struggle and growth, and even more for the controlled elegance of its style." There were also an experimental drama, The Fifth Column , written in 1937 and put one stage in 1940, and poems that reflected juvenile humor, imagism, or expressed love to Mary Welsh, who became his fourth wife.
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Writing style
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Hemingway's works tend to depict a harsh and disillusioned world where the traditional values became irreconcilable with the new view of life. Casting aside social conventions, the characters find little to sustain them except certain "codes" of conduct such as bullfighting, hunting, or fishing. These codes applied to daily life help to provide dignity and meaning in the absurd and pointless world where age, war, or psychological despair formulated a tragic destiny. Although many critics pointed out that Hemingway's increasing preoccupation with the myth of his own machismo was a catalyst for the devolution of his writing, the precision and concision, the hard, clean objectivity of his early works made his writing a piece of craftsmanship of showing rather than telling. Instead of using traditional expository mode to develop a story, Hemingway favors restricted narrative methods that "allowed characters to reveal themselves through their dialogue and actions, and meanings to develop from situations without authorial comment." One of his key theories is the "iceberg" principle, according to which "only a fraction of the meaning of a scene shows on the surface; the rest must be inferred from the individual details." Another similar device is synecdoche, "the traditional rhetorical device in which a part of something comes to signify the whole, as a few characters might come to stand for an entire generation." These devices, and the use of multiple narrators in some of the stories, help to portray a world where "there are few certainties, where the comforts of traditional assumptions have been stripped away, and where violence, conflict, and death are inescapable realities."
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| Last Years |
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Hemingway's last years were troubled. By 1960 Hemingway's depression had worsened, the repetitive patterns of gaining and losing weight, gaining and losing touch with reality, Hemingway was admitted to the clinic, where he was diagnosed with a variety of ailments and given electroshock therapy to treat his depression. Hemingway always held himself to the highest standards; he was not happy unless he was stronger than the next man, a better writer than the other, a better lover than the younger men. In the end he could not bear to live a life in which he could not triumph. In 1961, Hemingway who suffered from hypertension and depression, shot himself at home in Idaho.
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Reference
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"Ernest Hemingway." Contemporary Authors Online , Gale, 2005.
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