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Kiyasova R.M. senior teacher Rasulova Z.Kh. senior teacher Raxmonova Yu.Kh.
PhD student assistant. Khusanova I.A. assistant
Department of Foreign Languages Tashkent State Transport University
A HETEROGENEOUS LEGACY: EXAMINING HEMINGWAY'S STYLE IN HIS LATER YEARS
Abstract. Ernest Hemingway's later works present a complex and multifaceted challenge in stylistic analysis. This article explores the heterogeneity of his writing during this period, highlighting the diverse critical reception of works like "The Old Man and the Sea" and "Across the River and into the Trees." It examines the influence of existentialist philosophy on his fragmented style and the shift away from his earlier "iceberg theory" approach. The article concludes by suggesting that Hemingway's late style, despite its inconsistencies, offers valuable insights into his evolving worldview and his enduring legacy as a literary innovator.
Keywords: Ernest Hemingway, late style, stylistic diversity, "The Old Man and the Sea," "Across the River and into the Trees," existentialism, fragmentation, "iceberg theory," emotional impact, critical reception.
1. Introduction
Ernest Hemingway, a titan of American literature, is renowned for his minimalist prose style, characterized by short, declarative sentences and an emphasis on subtext. His early and mid-career works, like "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farewell to Arms," established him as a voice of a generation, capturing the disillusionment and stoicism of the post-war era. However, analyzing Hemingway's style in his later years presents a more complex and multifaceted challenge.
This article delves into the stylistic heterogeneity of Hemingway's later works, encompassing novels like the critically acclaimed "The Old Man and the Sea" and the more contentious "Across the River and into the Trees." We will explore the diverse critical reception of these works, highlighting the stylistic choices that both captivated and divided readers. Furthermore, we will examine the influence of existentialist philosophy on his fragmented style and the evolution away from his earlier, iceberg-like approach to narrative. By closely reading key
passages and considering the biographical and literary context, this analysis aims to illuminate the development of Hemingway's voice in his later years. Ultimately, we will argue that despite inconsistencies, Hemingway's late style offers valuable insights into his evolving worldview and his enduring legacy as a literary innovator.
2. Method part
Due to the nature of the article analyzing literary style, a traditional "methods" section wouldn't be entirely applicable. However, we can include a section outlining the approach to analyzing Hemingway's late style. Here's what you can add:
Examining Hemingway's Style: A Multifaceted Approach
This analysis of Hemingway's late style draws on various sources and methods to provide a comprehensive picture. Here's an overview of the approach taken:
• Close Reading: The primary focus lies on close reading of key passages from Hemingway's later works, particularly "The Old Man and the Sea," "A Moveable Feast," "Across the River and into the Trees," and "Islands in the Stream." This allows for a meticulous examination of sentence structure, word choice, and the overall effect of his stylistic choices.
• Critical Reception: The analysis considers critical responses to Hemingway's late works. By including excerpts from reviews and scholarly articles, the article demonstrates the range of interpretations and evaluations of his style during this period.
• Biographical Context: Briefly touching upon significant events in Hemingway's life during his later years can offer insights into the evolution of his style. This might include the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and his personal struggles.
• Literary Influences: Examining the influence of existentialist philosophy and other literary movements on Hemingway's writing style can illuminate his thematic choices and stylistic techniques.
By combining these approaches, the article aims to provide a nuanced understanding of Hemingway's stylistic legacy in his later years.
3. Results and Discussions
Discussing the style of E. Hemingway's later period as a whole is not feasible. The reason is that many of his works from this period, as is known, are unfinished. They can only be discussed in the context of the author's works published during his lifetime (an exception may be the memoir "A Moveable Feast," practically prepared by Hemingway for publication). However, even when referring to the completed works of the writer, it is necessary to note that they are all very uneven and stylistically diverse. Accordingly, the evaluations of these works are also diverse - ranging from sharply negative to enthusiastic.
From a stylistic point of view, the novella "The Old Man and the Sea" and the memoir "A Moveable Feast" are highly regarded. J. Meyers in his biography
of Hemingway cites a number of favorable press responses to this work: "The Parisian scenes are absolutely complete, the scenes and characters are far removed in time, and therefore presented in a kind of tranquil state, and even with amazing immediacy, making these episodes some of the best in his artistic work" (New York Herald Tribune Book Week). Meyers believes that the memoir may be the best thing Hemingway has written since the 1920s.
Conversely, the most negative evaluations are given to the style of the novel "Across the River and Into the Trees." "In the book," Anthony Burgess believes, "the balance is disturbed. The images do not work to their full potential... Passages on military topics are difficult to fit into love scenes, which, being gallant, as if from novels of the eighteenth century, are difficult to perceive. The characters do not simply perform simple actions, such as: closing the car door, choosing champagne, or enjoying the heat - they are forced to do this "perfectly" or "correctly," or both. There are too many unmotivated digressions in the book -against Sinclair Lewis, Martha Gellhorn, who appears on the pages of the work as Richard Cantwell's third wife - and this truly hinders readers' attempts to perceive Hemingway's persona as sympathetic." Hemingway's goal in this work was to create, above all, a truthful rather than an appealing image of an elderly person.
It is also impossible to speak of any unequivocal connections between the style of Hemingway's works from the 1940s and 1950s with his early work or the work of the 1930s. In those books where Hemingway refers to the 1920s, his style largely retains similarities with the style of literary works of that time ("A Moveable Feast," "The Garden of Eden"). The novels "Across the River and Into the Trees" and "Islands in the Stream," in turn, are stylistically continuous with the style of the novels "For Whom the Bell Tolls" or "To Have and Have Not."
In his early work, Hemingway's style was to some extent characterized by a style characterized by emphasized detachment of writing, fixation in the works only of the external impressions of the hero, their fragmentary nature and fragmentation. Such a style, arising at the intersection of artistic and philosophical worldviews, S. Finkelstein calls "alienated": "The process of narration in writing," he writes in the work "Existentialism and the problem of alienation in American literature," "is a tool of perception of life and reflection on it, the style of which is dictated by perception itself." In contrast to classical descriptions, the style of alienation, reflecting the fear, anxiety, and loneliness of the observer himself, paints the external world as cold, hostile, and impenetrable. Alienation can be expressed in a language devoid of any imagery, resorting to a deliberate emphasis on sound, depriving words of their inherent function as instruments of perception and giving them the appearance of concrete objects. This was the style of many works by G. Stein, who, as is known, acted as one of Hemingway's literary teachers. The frenzied rhythms, sound repetitions, and changing word order deprive the style of the ability to evoke a humanized response to the external world.
Such a style was characteristic of existentialist writers. For example, Sartre, analyzing Camus' "The Stranger," wrote: "The presence of death at the end of our journey has scattered our future, our life has no 'tomorrow,' it is a succession of present moments." This idea of life corresponds to Camus' phrase, which expresses only the present, it is separated from the next phrase by "non-being." Between each phrase, Sartre writes, "the world is destroyed and reborn; the word, as soon as it arises, is a creation from nothingness; the phrase of 'The Stranger' is an island. And we jump from phrase to phrase, from non-being to non-being." In the article "Explanation of 'The Stranger,' 1943, Sartre, stopping at such a narrative form, notes that Camus borrowed it from contemporary American fiction, and in particular from Hemingway. V. M. Tolmachev, in turn, agreeing with the author, writes that in Hemingway's books of the 1920s, "the brightness of colors, tangibility of form ('Apollonian') appear as the reverse side of 'nothingness' ('Dionysian'), which has no outlines - which can only be represented in a reflected form and forms a kind of black lining for the pattern of word-stones." It should be noted that in Hemingway's early work, the use of such a style was associated with the philosophy of existentialism, which was close to the writer's works. The abundance of material impressions, the sparsity in the perception of existence are the result of the absence of a unifying idea that could give the world integrity.
If we compare the novels "Islands in the Stream" and "Across the River and Into the Trees" with the novel "The Garden of Eden" or the memoir "A Moveable Feast," then we can note that in the latter, the principle of montage, which can be called "shooting with a moving camera," is more pronounced, conveying the "discreteness" of the world. In general, the alienated style, despite the proximity of the novels "Across the River and Into the Trees" and "Islands in the Stream" to the philosophy of existentialism, plays a lesser role in them than in Hemingway's early work. These works are characterized by fragmentariness, fragmentation in the description of the actions of the characters and events, which, like in the author's earlier works, convey the detachment of the hero from the world of people, the desire and impossibility to unite with them. But if in Hemingway's early works such a style played the role of a subtext, through which we recognized the state of the hero and the world, their relationship, then now its role in this capacity is diminished.
Thomas Hudson and Richard Cantwell receive less diverse external impressions, they are immersed in themselves, therefore descriptions of the external world are used much less frequently in these Hemingway's books. If the young heroes of "A Moveable Feast" and "The Garden of Eden" are only exploring the world, trying to get as many impressions from it as possible, then the heroes of "Islands in the Stream" and "Across the River and Into the Trees" are groping for connections between phenomena. Therefore, syntactically, the latter works differ from the novel "The Garden of Eden" and the memoir: they are characterized by longer, more dissected, complex sentences that convey internal
movement, development of thought, analysis and synthesis of impressions and sensations. And since the surrounding phenomena are not just described but are passed through the consciousness and soul of the characters, they are more emotionally colored.
The formal features of the alienated style are preserved in the memoir "A Moveable Feast" and the novel "The Garden of Eden." In them, Hemingway prefers not to describe, but to name; he recreates not so much reality as the conditions of its existence, as V. M. Tolmachev rightly believes. The abundance of nouns, identical remarks, repeated use of the conjunction "and" - thanks to this, "Hemingway creates a kind of perception scheme of elementary stimuli (heat of the sun, coldness of water, taste of wine, etc.), which only in the reader's mind become a full-fledged fact of sensory experience."
This writing style is characteristic of those pages of the novel "The Garden of Eden" where the joint life of David and Catherine, abundant with repetitions, is described. For instance, in just a few phrases, everything that fills the time of the spouses is listed: "A jetty ran out into the blue and pleasant sea and they fished from the jetty and swam on the beach and each day helped the fishermen haul in the long net that brought the fish up onto the long sloping beach. They drank aperitifs in the cafe on the corner facing the sea and watched the sails of the mackerel fishing boats out in the Gulf of Lions... They had made love when they were half awake with the light bright outside but the room still shadowed and then had lain together and been happy and tired and then made love again. Then they were so hungry that they did not think they would live until breakfast and now they were in the cafe eating and watching the sea and the sails and it was a new day again." However, in the novel, this style no longer carries the deep and overarching semantic load as before; it merely serves as a means of conveying the protagonist's personal dissatisfaction. Moreover, since the novel was not completed by Hemingway, in some places, there can be noted a mechanical fragmentation of the action, which has become not a necessity but a habit.
An example of such a style in Hemingway's later work is also found in the memoir. For instance, the protagonist of the work reminisces about one of the frosty days in Switzerland: "I remember the smell of the pines and sleeping on the mattresses of beech leaves in the woodcutter's huts and skiing through the forest following the tracks of hares and foxes. In the high mountains above the tree line, I remember following the track of a fox until I came in sight of him and watching him stand with his right forefoot raised and then go carefully to stop and then pounce, and the whiteness and the flutter of a ptarmigan bursting out of the snow and flying away and over the ridge." In this brief episode, devoid of descriptiveness, only a series of short impressions are listed, capturing the sensations experienced by the protagonist through all five senses. However, in this passage, Hemingway's style loses the detachment from the world, the impassivity that characterized the writer's early work and are the essential features of the alienated style. It presents the reader with something more than mere words
- the sensation of a frosty, sunny, and joyful day when all senses are open to the world.
In this work by Hemingway, possessing all the characteristics of the aforementioned writing style, we feel the author's and the protagonist's living, soulful, and deeply felt attitude towards the world, as seen, for example, in the description of the river with its incessant movement: "With the fishermen and the life of the river, the beautiful barges with their own life on board, the tugs with their smokestacks that folded back to pass under the bridges, pulling a tow of barges, the great elms of the stone banks of the river, the plane trees and the some places the poplars, I could never be lonely along the river... Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light."
In another scene from the memoir, also constructed around conveying fragmented actions and impressions of the protagonist, nonetheless, a sense of fondness towards the world and the people around is conveyed: "It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write."
Overall, in the writer's works of these years (especially in the novel "Islands in the Stream"), starting from the novels "To Have and Have Not" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls", some form of pathos (G.N. Pospelov) becomes more pronounced: heroism, tragedy, romance - categories that Hemingway previously treated with skepticism, now become an important component of his creativity.
The rejection of the value system that led to the carnage of the First World War is reflected in the vocabulary of Frederick Henry and Jake Barnes, who seek to avoid lofty concepts and use deliberately primitive, simple language. Examples of such ironic attitudes towards "high words" and actions are preserved in Hemingway's later works as well, for instance, in the memoir "A Moveable Feast", where one can encounter two sentences differing in emotional tone. One appeals to a high style and poetic traditions, the other undermines them. For instance, speaking of his desire to crown Ezra Pound with laurels as a great poet, Hemingway, in the very next sentence, lowers the emotional register of the passage with a mundane remark: "...in my dreams I had pictured him as coming, perhaps, to live in a small Greek temple and that maybe I could go with Ezra when he would drop in to crown him with laurel. I knew where there was fine laurel that I could gather, riding out on my bicycle to get it..."
In "The Old Man and the Sea," "high" vocabulary is also used by both the author and the protagonist, but its role and the pathos of expression are entirely different. There is nothing ironic in the way the old man talks about "fate," "happiness." For example, during fishing, he thinks: "Her fate was to stay in the dark depth of the ocean, away from all traps, baits, and human cunning. My fate was to go after her alone and find her where no man had ever reached. No man on
earth. Now we are tied together since noon. And there is no one to help either her or me." Often the old man speaks about the strength of man, about his belief in victory: "Though it is unjust," he mentally added, "I will prove to her what man can do and what he can endure," about his love for fish and its superiority over man: "Man is not anything besides the wonderful beasts and birds. I wish I was that fish, swimming now in the sea depths." For him, all these things are worthy of lofty words, filled with deep meaning, in which the old man's life experience convinces him.
Santiago not only speaks of lofty concepts in a lofty style. In one line of the old man's inner monologue, the speech can be equally elevated about the fate of a person and about quite prosaic matters: "It's not good for a man to be alone in his old age," he thought. "But it's unavoidable. I must remember to eat the tuna, while it's still fresh, because I can't afford to lose strength. I must remember to eat it in the morning, even if I'm not hungry at all. Just don't forget," he repeated to himself. The story is characterized by the magnification of the simplest things, such as food, the sea, animals. Hemingway and the old man Santiago in this work have achieved harmony, which comes from understanding that it is precisely the simple and essential things that lie at the very foundation of life and that happiness, luck, and fate are just as simple things, once understood. Thanks to Santiago's approach to life, everything in "The Old Man and the Sea" acquires epic generalization and grandeur: the fish becomes an embodiment of the forces of nature, the boy, whose name is hardly mentioned in the pages of the work, becomes a kind protector of the old man, and the famous baseball player becomes "the great Di Maggio."
Hemingway's characters and the writer himself experienced much, learned lessons of mutual assistance and heroism during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, and they still believe in them, and now, if necessary, they resort to the help of high vocabulary, not considering it hypocrisy. When the writer refers to such facts of reality that he is not ashamed to poeticize, comparisons infused with expression and subjectivity appear in his work. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the speech of Thomas Hudson, especially in the third part of the novel "Islands in the Stream," words like "duty," "responsibility," and "friend" are encountered.
4. Conclusion
Ernest Hemingway's later works defy easy categorization when it comes to stylistic analysis. This article explored the heterogeneity of his prose in works like "The Old Man and the Sea" and "Across the River and into the Trees," highlighting the range of critical reception they received. We examined the influence of existentialist philosophy on his fragmented style and the shift away from his earlier "iceberg theory" approach.
The analysis revealed a fascinating inconsistency in Hemingway's later style. While some works, like "A Moveable Feast," retained the characteristic elements of his earlier minimalist style, others, like "Islands in the Stream," exhibited a shift towards longer, more complex sentences and a greater focus on
introspection. This stylistic evolution can be partly attributed to the influence of existentialist philosophy and the life experiences that shaped Hemingway's worldview in his later years.
Despite the inconsistencies, Hemingway's late style offers valuable insights into his evolving perspective. The fragmented narration in works like "Across the River and into the Trees" reflects the disillusionment and alienation that permeated his later life. Conversely, the emotionally resonant prose of "The Old Man and the Sea" reveals a newfound appreciation for simple things and the enduring human spirit.
In conclusion, Hemingway's late style, with all its contradictions, serves as a testament to his restless artistic spirit and his lifelong pursuit of innovation. Even in his later years, he continued to experiment with form and voice, leaving behind a rich and complex literary legacy that continues to inspire and challenge readers.
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