The Art of Manliness - For Whom The Bell Tolls

00:00:00.000 Rhett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.960 Ernest Hemingway's classic novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, is often designated as one of the

00:00:16.260 greatest books about war ever written and has appeared on the Marine Corps' recommended reading

00:00:20.140 list. Today on the show, I am packed For Whom the Bell Tolls with Hemingway scholar Mark Chirino.

00:00:24.500 We discuss the background of the novel, its themes, and the literary techniques Hemingway

00:00:29.040 employed in writing it. Win our conversation with our picks for the one true sentence in

00:00:33.300 the book. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash tolls. And just

00:00:38.240 a heads up, we do talk about some spoilers with the plot in a general way. We'll let you know

00:00:42.380 the point in the show to stop listening if you don't want to hear them.

00:00:59.040 All right, Mark Chirino, welcome back to the show.

00:01:01.740 Hi, Brett. Thanks for having me.

00:01:03.780 So we had you on last year to talk about Ernest Hemingway. You are an Ernest Hemingway scholar.

00:01:08.740 You've written several books about him. You have a podcast all about Ernest Hemingway and

00:01:12.740 his work. I wanted to bring you back on the podcast to talk about one of my favorite Ernest

00:01:17.940 Hemingway books, For Whom the Bell Tolls. This is often listed as one of the greatest war novels

00:01:23.440 ever written. I know it was the late Senator John McCain's favorite novel. I'm curious,

00:01:29.860 let's talk about this. Hemingway wrote this book in 1940. So this was about 14 years after he wrote

00:01:36.300 The Sun Also Rises, about 10 years after he wrote A Farewell to Arms. How was Hemingway different

00:01:43.480 from when he wrote those early novels? Like who was Ernest Hemingway when he published

00:01:47.360 For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940?

00:01:49.320 Yeah, that's a great question. So in addition to this being a wonderful novel in and of itself,

00:01:57.340 For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940 was something of a vindication or an act of redemption for

00:02:04.180 Hemingway. As you mentioned, Brett, Hemingway's reputation was really launched between 1925 and

00:02:11.940 1929 those five years with two really great books of short stories in our time and men without women

00:02:21.020 and two iconic novels. The Sun Also Rises in 1926 and A Farewell to Arms in 1929. And so the American

00:02:30.860 1930s were also Hemingway's 1930s, which you would think would be the prime of his career just as it is

00:02:38.220 the prime of his life. But he really only wrote one very poor novel, which is called To Have and Have

00:02:45.100 Not, and some nonfiction pieces, an uneven book of short stories. So there were people who considered

00:02:53.560 Hemingway washed up past his prime. So when 1940 comes and For Whom the Bell Tolls comes out,

00:03:00.100 it's almost like Hemingway's back. It's his great comeback. And I would only add just parenthetically

00:03:06.860 that the next great book that Hemingway writes is The Old Man in the Sea, which is 12 years later.

00:03:15.180 So if we're thinking of Hemingway as this iconic American novelist, he does go quite a long time

00:03:22.360 in between his major works.

00:03:24.660 Why did he go so far between his major works? What was going on in his life or his writing career?

00:03:28.940 So I think in the 30s, he had a lot of distractions. He, first of all, his personal

00:03:36.260 life, it was conducive to adventure and to experience. He wrote a treatise on bullfighting

00:03:43.640 in 1932. He wrote a chronicle of his safari called the Green Hills of Africa in 1935. And as your

00:03:53.320 listeners would understand, the 1930s in America was really calling for a writer to respond to what

00:04:02.060 was going on at the time. The social and political unrest, the depression. This was something that

00:04:09.140 John Steinbeck responded to. This was something that William Faulkner responded to. Hemingway was

00:04:14.340 off doing his own thing. So a perfect example is For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway spends the last

00:04:21.680 few years in Spain covering the Spanish Civil War as a journalist. He writes a bad play about it.

00:04:27.780 He writes a documentary about it. And of course, he yields this wonderful novel. So I would say that his

00:04:34.020 lifestyle was given to experience that lent itself to writing, but could also take away from it.

00:04:41.840 Okay, so let's dig into For Whom the Bell Tolls. It is set in the Spanish Civil War. This was a very

00:04:48.160 complex, complicated conflict. But big picture, what was the Spanish Civil War about? And then what was

00:04:53.860 Hemingway's connection to it? Okay, so the Spanish Civil War was fought between 1936 and 1939. And

00:05:02.320 the adversaries were the nationalists against the Republicans. The nationalists were fascists,

00:05:11.000 and the Republicans were made up of various factions, including socialists and communists.

00:05:17.740 The nationalists were led by Francisco Franco, who had attempted a military coup in 1936.

00:05:26.040 So the Spanish Civil War was essentially an extension of this plot to seize power. Another way we can think 0.76

00:05:33.600 about this is that the Republicans were supported by the Soviet Union, and the nationalists were supported

00:05:41.680 by Germany. And if you just look at Spain on the map, you'll see why those countries and the rest of

00:05:49.040 the world had such a vested interest in the outcome of the Civil War.

00:05:52.480 Gotcha. Okay, so a lot of people call the Spanish Civil War sort of a precursor,

00:05:57.900 a dress rehearsal for World War II. Exactly.

00:06:00.840 Yeah, you have Germany, the fascists there, and then you have the Soviet Union involved as well.

00:06:05.640 And yeah, the Spanish Civil War, the outcome was the nationalists won. And that set up General Franco's

00:06:11.360 rule from, I guess, the 1930s until 1975. Was that when it ended?

00:06:16.440 That is exactly right. And so Hemingway is chronicling the Spanish Civil War, which is

00:06:22.320 what he sees as a noble battle that was lost. Let's keep in mind that Hemingway began writing

00:06:30.000 the novel. So the Spanish Civil War was 1936 to 1939. Hemingway begins For Whom the Bell Tolls

00:06:36.660 in 1939 as the war is still going on. He went there because he loved Spain. He first visited Spain in

00:06:45.980 1923 at the behest of Gertrude Stein, mainly because of the bullfights. But he loved the

00:06:52.840 Spanish people. He loved the countryside and nature in Spain, the fishing, the bullfights,

00:07:01.060 the culture, so that when Spain was being torn apart by the Spanish Civil War, he was

00:07:06.420 personally invested in it. He really had his heart in this battle. Now, if I can, Brad, I just want to

00:07:13.560 say two quick things about that. So when you have a writer who really believes in one side depicting

00:07:22.360 the war, this is really dangerous terrain for art. Propaganda, one-sidedness rarely leads to

00:07:31.380 excellent art. So one of the things you'll find in For Whom the Bell Tolls is a concerted effort on

00:07:37.400 Hemingway's part to present both sides. And I don't really mean both sides in terms of, hey, maybe

00:07:44.280 fascism is a really good thing. No, what he's really suggesting is that there are human beings on both

00:07:50.660 sides. And there are flawed human beings on our side, and there are flawed human beings on the other

00:07:59.500 side. And so he's pretty concentrated about that.

00:08:03.540 So something about Hemingway's work is, a lot of his novels are autobiographical. So The Sun Also

00:08:09.500 Rises, famously autobiographical. We did a podcast about that novel. To what extent is For Whom the

00:08:15.840 Bell Tolls autobiographical?

00:08:18.360 It's autobiographical in some really interesting ways. So for me, my favorite aspect of Hemingway's

00:08:27.740 autobiography that appears in For Whom the Bell Tolls are the few mentions that Robert Jordan, the

00:08:34.500 protagonist of For Whom the Bell Tolls, has of his family. So Hemingway's father committed suicide in

00:08:42.700 1928. And the same thing happens with Robert Jordan's father. He comments about his father being a coward

00:08:51.200 for killing himself. In fact, going as far as to say that Robert Jordan's mother bullied his father

00:08:58.960 into suicide, which are the same accusations that Hemingway has of his own father. And furthermore,

00:09:08.200 Robert Jordan's grandfather was a Civil War hero, as was Hemingway's. And so Robert Jordan,

00:09:16.860 For Whom the Bell Tolls is saying, I wonder if courage skips a generation. Maybe if it went from

00:09:22.240 my grandfather right to me. And then we see the scene or the memory where Robert Jordan throws

00:09:28.900 the pistol that his father used off a cliff into the lake in Montana, which is the same thing that

00:09:36.240 Hemingway does. I would also add that Robert Jordan is from Montana. He's a Spanish professor

00:09:42.000 from Montana. Hemingway loved the American West. To Hemingway, the American West was essentially

00:09:49.440 Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. And he ended up dying in Idaho where he had a house.

00:09:57.240 Yeah, I thought that was interesting. Another sort of autobiographical thing I saw in the Robert

00:10:01.220 Jordan character, there's this moment where Robert Jordan's talking about, you know, I'm in this fight,

00:10:07.020 but when I get back, I'm going to write the best book ever about this. And that's what Hemingway

00:10:11.720 did. That's exactly. So that is a little cheeky, isn't it, Brett? A little self-referential. He's

00:10:17.180 like, somebody's got to write the really great book about this war. So yes, Hemingway challenged

00:10:22.300 himself to write the great book of the Spanish Civil War. I think he probably succeeded. Robert

00:10:27.100 Jordan has those same ambitions. Well, let's talk more about Robert Jordan. So he's an American

00:10:33.060 who goes to Spain to fight on the Republican side, falls in love with this woman named Maria.

00:10:38.520 And when Robert Jordan initially goes to Spain to fight, he goes with these high political ideals.

00:10:44.640 But then throughout the story, his reasons for fighting change. Why do people seem to respond

00:10:51.380 to this protagonist so powerfully? I think John McCain, you did an interview with John McCain's

00:10:57.560 speech writer and assistant. And he talked about how John McCain would say, Robert Jordan is as real

00:11:05.240 to me as any other living, real human being. So what is it about this Robert Jordan character that

00:11:10.660 people respond so viscerally to? Yeah, that's extraordinary. And you see really people across

00:11:16.440 the political spectrum respond to this guy. Mark Salter was the guest of our One True Podcast who

00:11:24.320 talked about John McCain's lifelong devotion to this book. And I think the title of John McCain's

00:11:32.540 documentary is like worth the fighting for, which is from For Whom the Bell Tolls. Well, I think with

00:11:41.140 Robert Jordan, he's become synonymous with an individual who puts a cause and other people above himself.

00:11:51.140 In the most simplistic terms, that is what he has come to embody. As you know, Brett, the novel is

00:11:59.240 much more complex than that. And it's not as heroic or as easy as that. But in basic terms, that is what

00:12:09.320 he did. He had a fine life as a Spanish teacher in Montana. And he put himself in danger, essentially

00:12:17.900 giving up his freedom and his life for other people. And that is something that is the definition

00:12:26.460 of heroism for many people. Yeah, you see that throughout the novel, these internal dialogues

00:12:32.740 that Robert Jordan has. He's just talking about duty. I've got this duty. I got to do this thing.

00:12:37.440 And he's always kind of stealing himself up to fulfill this task, which is blowing up this bridge.

00:12:42.500 Says, I got to do it, no matter what. That's exactly right. So that's his charge, right? He has to blow

00:12:48.860 up a bridge to prevent a counteroffensive from the fascists. He knows that that's his job. But meanwhile,

00:12:56.240 human emotions get in the way. And he comes to like this band of guerrillas that he is associated

00:13:04.320 with. But of course, he comes to love Maria. And sort of the micro effect of putting your life

00:13:13.100 in service of a group of people is also putting your life in the service of one other person in

00:13:20.080 a relationship, in love or romantic relationship. So one of the things that Robert Jordan discovers

00:13:26.740 through his love of Maria is that he himself with another person could be everything. It's a direct

00:13:34.580 quote from the novel. He himself with another person could be everything. It takes him a long

00:13:40.440 time to learn it, right? He learns it, takes him an entire novel and a few catastrophes to learn it.

00:13:46.320 But that is something that he learned. And that really does seem to resonate with a lot of readers.

00:13:52.640 Yeah, I thought that was interesting, the transformation of Robert Jordan. So he's,

00:13:55.580 in the beginning of the novel, he's talking about the duty to this abstract cause, right? Freedom,

00:14:01.260 republicanism. And that's still there at the end. But towards the end, as you said, he learned to

00:14:05.640 love this group that he was with. And he learned to love Maria. And he says, I'm not just doing it

00:14:09.660 for this abstract ideal. I'm doing this for these individual people as well. Yes. Here's a question

00:14:15.340 I have. As I was reading the novel, I noticed that Hemingway, whenever he referred to Robert Jordan,

00:14:21.060 he always used his full name. It was always Robert Jordan said this and Robert Jordan said that.

00:14:25.580 A lot of the other characters, they just got their first name, Maria or Pilar.

00:14:29.120 Why did Hemingway do that? Is there a reason he did that, you think?

00:14:32.480 Did you find that distracting or did you like that technique?

00:14:36.500 I didn't find it distracting. I just thought it was interesting because a lot of other novels you

00:14:39.520 read, right? Like they'll say the character's full name at the beginning. And then after a while,

00:14:43.180 it's just like, well, it's just Robert. You know, I know who you're talking about. Like

00:14:45.800 Hemingway, you can tell this was conscious. Like he decided when I talk about Robert Jordan,

00:14:49.500 I'm going to use his full name.

00:14:51.280 So all I can tell you is the effect that it has. I don't know. Hemingway never said this is why

00:14:57.920 I'm doing this. One way is it seems to add some kind of a grandeur to it. You know, Robert Jordan,

00:15:05.580 Robert Jordan, or there's sort of something rhythmic to it. It kind of reminds us of the River Jordan.

00:15:11.160 That's how it seems to me. To me, you know, being a 21st century reader, it reminds me a lot of saying

00:15:16.980 Charlie Brown. You know, nobody ever says Charlie or Brown. They always say Charlie Brown. And so I'm

00:15:22.860 not sure that I think Hemingway does, you know, maybe we'll talk about this at some point that

00:15:27.680 Hemingway does do a lot of techniques in this novel that are kind of showy. And to me, that constant

00:15:34.400 thing of Robert Jordan is a little bit calls attention to itself.

00:15:38.980 I think it does, but I think you're right. It makes Robert Jordan, this almost mythical figure.

00:15:44.900 He's like John Brown, you know?

00:15:46.700 Yes.

00:15:47.240 You know, you don't, you don't, you don't just call him John. No, he's John Brown. Or you don't say

00:15:51.900 George, it's George Washington.

00:15:54.100 That's a great point. I used, for some reason, my mind went to comic strip and yours went to

00:15:58.700 American history. So take of that what you will, but no, no, that's a good point. 1.00

00:16:03.980 So we've been talking about some of the themes in the novel, this idea of duty,

00:16:06.900 fighting for people you love. What are some other themes in the novel? And are they typical

00:16:12.120 of Hemingway novels?

00:16:14.020 I think the most typical of Hemingway is he wanted to examine how man's mind functioned at war.

00:16:25.500 And he also wanted to examine how your relationship, let's say a romantic relationship,

00:16:33.720 can intensify during the urgency or crisis of war. So this is true in A Farewell to Arms,

00:16:43.180 this is true in For Whom the Bell Tolls, also in a later novel called Across the River and Into

00:16:48.560 the Trees, when you know you only have a finite number of days left. How does that change the way

00:16:57.120 you have a relationship? All the rules go out the window. And one of the things that

00:17:02.980 Robert Jordan says out loud is, can you live your whole life in three days if you do it with

00:17:09.740 this kind of intensity? So Hemingway's depiction of man at war was absolutely consistent with what

00:17:18.660 is Hemingway-esque. I would also point to the title, For Whom the Bell Tolls, which is taken from

00:17:25.420 John Donne. And what that title alludes to is we're all connected. All of humanity is connected.

00:17:34.500 Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. When something bad happens to one person,

00:17:40.340 when one person dies, when something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. Not just the

00:17:46.780 people of our ethnicity or who are on our side, it happens to all of humanity. And so Hemingway,

00:17:55.260 even though he's depicting a man on one side in a war, is also experimenting with the notion of

00:18:04.400 for whom the bell tolls and that level of connection. Another thing that I saw,

00:18:09.860 we discussed this in our last conversation that you see in a lot of Hemingway's work.

00:18:13.640 And in fact, you wrote a book about it, Hemingway Thought in Action.

00:18:16.500 Yes.

00:18:17.080 How Hemingway, oftentimes he's seen as sort of this he-man who's just focused on action. But in the

00:18:25.600 action, you actually see a lot of introspection. And you see this a lot in the character of Robert

00:18:30.680 Jordan. A lot of the scenes are him just talking about, Robert, you got to stay focused, do this

00:18:36.040 thing. You got to get the wires right for this bridge. And then there's a short story I think

00:18:39.820 we talked about last time where a guy's building a camp and he's-

00:18:44.460 Yeah, big two-hearted river, right?

00:18:45.520 Yeah. And that reminded, like some of those scenes in For Whom the Bell Tolls reminded me of that short

00:18:49.800 story.

00:18:50.520 Well, your point is really essential because what is the plot of this novel? The plot is man has to go blow

00:18:59.580 bridge. How short do you think this novel could have been if all it was was the action of what

00:19:07.740 Robert Jordan had to do? But you're exactly right. What we get treated to are the thoughts and then the

00:19:16.400 thoughts about his thoughts, right? The metacognition. And Robert Jordan is showing doubt. He's weighing

00:19:26.260 different sides of things. He's engaging with his memory and his emotions, his fears. So absolutely,

00:19:34.220 if Robert Jordan were not a thoughtful person, this would be one of the most boring books ever.

00:19:41.260 All it would be was, oh, I wonder if the bridge is going to get blown or not. There's a line really

00:19:47.620 early in the book where he is thinking about the people that he's meeting. And then he says,

00:19:53.740 you're not a thinker. You're a bridge blower. You're not a thinker. You're a bridge blower.

00:20:00.980 So he's telling himself that his consciousness, his introspection, as you say, are not just

00:20:09.100 extraneous, irrelevant. They're unhelpful. It's almost as if he wishes he were a robot or an automaton.

00:20:17.400 Or a he-man. I will go blow bridge and I won't have any thoughts about it. But he's not. So he's 1.00

00:20:25.360 wrestling with those two things. In fact, he spends the entire novel wrestling. Last episode where you

00:20:33.840 and I talked about Hemingway more generally, we talked about the iceberg theory. And the iceberg

00:20:40.420 theory, I think, is turned upside down in this novel. So the iceberg theory normally means Hemingway

00:20:46.840 gives you one eighth of the information, the knowledge, the emotions, the facts, and you have

00:20:54.480 to interpret, deduce the rest. I don't think that's the case in this novel. I think he turns it upside

00:21:02.640 down. He gives you everything that's on Robert Jordan's mind, page after page. And some people

00:21:08.720 like it. And some people, they prefer the earlier style.

00:21:12.940 No, I actually, I think it's one of the reasons why I like For Whom the Bell Tolls so much is this

00:21:17.220 metacognition. You see Robert Jordan's thinking about his thinking and thinking about his thoughts.

00:21:22.680 Because I think everyone experiences that when they're going through something, they're not blowing

00:21:26.120 up a bridge, but something stressful. We talk to ourselves and we say things like, man, snap out of it.

00:21:33.060 You got to stay focused on what you're doing and quit thinking and quit worrying about this because

00:21:37.180 it's not doing any good. I think that's one of the reasons why Robert Jordan is so relatable.

00:21:41.120 Like, of course, most people aren't in extreme situations like the character Robert Jordan,

00:21:45.220 but we've all experienced that. And that's probably why it's considered one of the great war novels,

00:21:48.660 like why a lot of soldiers relate to the novel. Because I'm sure they had the exact same thoughts

00:21:52.860 as Robert Jordan.

00:21:54.600 So Hemingway once said, the worst thing that a soldier can have is imagination.

00:22:00.240 But it's the most important thing that a writer must have. And right there, that is the tension

00:22:06.120 right there. You're absolutely right. And what I would just direct your attention to,

00:22:10.460 and Brett, I don't know how you feel about spoilers.

00:22:13.040 No, yeah, go ahead and do spoilers. We'll give the spoiler alert before the show starts. 1.00

00:22:16.460 Okay. If you look at the last, see, I'll talk about it in general terms, look at the last two pages.

00:22:22.340 So really what we're thinking of, it's the last 15, 20 pages when we're not sure if the bridge is

00:22:30.140 going to get blown or not. It's exhilarating and inevitable. It's such a wonderful last sequence

00:22:37.360 of a novel. But the reason it's so protracted is that Hemingway is letting us into Robert Jordan's

00:22:47.200 thoughts and then his thoughts about his thoughts. So he's coaching himself. And I just, I'll read just

00:22:52.440 a few sentences. Think about them being away, he said. Think about them going through the timber.

00:22:57.780 Think about them crossing a creek. Think about them riding through the heather. Think about them

00:23:03.340 going up the slope. Think about them. Okay. So this is almost ridiculous. He's thinking about

00:23:09.960 what he should be thinking about. And that's how the, that's essentially how the book ends.

00:23:15.880 Yeah. No, the ending's really, it's, I think the first time I read it, I was like, that's it.

00:23:22.740 But then it kind of, it sits with you for a while. You think about it afterwards, like, oh, actually,

00:23:27.760 that's actually a really great way to end that novel.

00:23:30.420 So I think we could have talked about this when we talked about other themes. But now that we're

00:23:34.980 talking about the ending, maybe one of Hemingway's most famous notions is grace under pressure.

00:23:41.020 And Robert Jordan does exhibit grace under pressure. And in that, so he has to blow the bridge and this

00:23:50.620 rascal in his gang, Pablo, ends up absconding with the explosives. So when, when they gets the

00:23:59.140 explosives back, they're not really, they don't have the detonators. They don't have exactly what he

00:24:03.760 needs. So he has to sort of do a makeshift device. And then when he's wounded at the end of the novel,

00:24:10.900 he has to either quit or behave with honor and help his team anyway, help his side anyway.

00:24:20.940 And so it's really Robert Jordan exhibiting grace under pressure under all of these doomed

00:24:27.240 circumstances that also make this, that, that a really a quintessentially Hemingway-esque theme.

00:24:33.820 Yeah. The scene where Pablo runs off with the explosives, I think it's a great example. One

00:24:38.440 of my favorites of Hemingway using this metacognition because, you know, once Robert Jordan figures out

00:24:44.140 that Pablo ran off, he gets really angry, like super angry. And he's like saying, Hemingway uses the

00:24:49.440 word muck. I imagine he even meant he's probably substituting that for the F word. It was like,

00:24:55.080 muck, muck this guy, muck the Spanish people, muck Pilar, like muck, muck, muck, muck. And then he 1.00

00:24:59.640 said, Robert, get ahold of yourself. You can't get angry. Like anger is a, he basically calls it, it's

00:25:04.300 a, it's a luxury that you can't afford. And you had to just, this is the new situation you find yourself

00:25:09.980 in. Yeah. Robert Jordan exhibited that grace under pressure and he improvises. And I find that

00:25:15.460 really admirable because I think everyone's encountered that experience where someone does 0.98

00:25:19.940 something really stupid, just mucks up all your plans. And you want to get angry, but you realize 0.89

00:25:25.060 getting angry is not going to do anything. You just have to face the situation you have now and

00:25:29.900 act accordingly. He's filtering everything through what is going to help me blow the bridge.

00:25:37.220 What is my duty? What is my objective? And he has to stay so disciplined. And of course,

00:25:44.620 Hemingway being a good novelist gives a lot of distractions and a lot of impediments. Robert

00:25:51.720 Jordan deals with those impediments admirably. We're going to take a quick break for a word

00:25:56.560 from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So we've mentioned this metacognition idea. So

00:26:04.620 this is an innovation or narrative technique that Hemingway uses. He also did the reverse

00:26:09.360 iceberg theory. So typically in a Hemingway novel, he would just say this one line and then leave

00:26:15.180 everything else out. And it was left to the reader to figure out what that meant. And for whom the bell

00:26:20.000 tolls, he actually just, no, here's, here's what this means, right? You get to see the protagonist's

00:26:24.680 thoughts. Any other narrative or narrative innovations Hemingway used in For Whom the Bell

00:26:29.480 Tolls?

00:26:30.440 So maybe the most conspicuous one, and I'd love to hear how this landed for you, Brett. So

00:26:37.260 as in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man in the Sea and Across the River and

00:26:44.020 the Trees, Hemingway's setting his novel in another country. And so he had to convey the language,

00:26:52.380 everybody is speaking Spanish. And so what Hemingway does, I haven't seen quite done in this

00:27:00.400 way before. In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway kind of pre-translates Spanish into English. So he is

00:27:10.400 saying, the woman of Pablo. And it's like, what? And so in other words, he's using the Spanish phrase

00:27:18.680 and translating it literally into English, which gives it a kind of a stilted effect. It almost

00:27:24.900 sounds like, let's say, a Spanish person who has recently learned English and is using some foreign

00:27:33.060 syntax or foreign vocabulary. And you can totally understand what they're saying, but you can also

00:27:40.220 identify them as a non-native speaker. And so Hemingway, you know, my edition of the novel is

00:27:46.680 471 pages. He does this literally for 471 pages. Robert Jordan does not speak to another American

00:27:53.960 during the course of the novel. So was that distracting or did you, were you charmed by that

00:27:59.600 technique?

00:28:00.440 No, it was interesting. So I noticed that as well. And I, when he did the translation,

00:28:04.300 like he would use thou, right? Because in Spanish too, and you know, the informal is actually thou.

00:28:13.240 It's, it's formal in our, in English, but it's informal in Spanish. And so whenever, you know,

00:28:18.080 the Spanish people would be talking to each other to be like thou, thou, thou, thee. And it is, 0.97

00:28:22.560 it is interesting. Like it reminded me as I was reading the English translation, then the Spanish

00:28:26.660 reminded me of Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy, when he would have Spanish speakers speak Spanish,

00:28:32.460 he just like, I'm just gonna have him speak in Spanish. And you have to figure it out.

00:28:36.520 Hemingway didn't do that. Actually, I find, I found Hemingway's, I actually liked that.

00:28:42.960 I know Spanish. And so I, McCarthy novel doesn't bother me when they're just Spanish there, 1.00

00:28:47.700 but I actually liked how Hemingway incorporated the English as well.

00:28:51.780 One of the guests that we've had on One True Podcast is Elon Stavins.

00:28:56.660 Who is a Mexican scholar. And we talked about that exact thing about Cormac McCarthy.

00:29:04.380 And Cormac McCarthy, he'll go a page or two with it. They're just talking, they're just speaking

00:29:10.540 Spanish. And since I don't speak Spanish, it's like I'm in a room with two people speaking Spanish.

00:29:17.460 And I try to pick up what I can. And McCarthy must've been totally comfortable with that effect.

00:29:24.000 And Hemingway wants to give a slightly different effect. Well, I don't want them speaking Spanish 1.00

00:29:29.260 for 471 pages. Otherwise you won't get anything. So I will give you a sense of foreignness without

00:29:36.900 completely alienating you. It's great to see that these two writers are just having different

00:29:43.700 techniques. It's kind of like watching an old movie and you see the two Nazis like talking in kind of a 0.54

00:29:49.660 weird accent. It's like, it's not quite a German accent. They're speaking English, but just in kind 0.58

00:29:55.420 of a wacky way that conveys foreignness. It kind of subconsciously reminds you that we're not in

00:30:01.840 America and we're not speaking English. In fact, the nickname that they have for Robert Jordan is

00:30:07.200 Inglés, right? It's like, just as a, as a, to denote that he is not a native speaker.

00:30:12.880 Any other, oh, go ahead. Yeah, no, no. I was going to, I anticipated that you were going to ask

00:30:17.660 if there's any other techniques. The, the only other one I wanted to mention, and it is kind of

00:30:22.480 an important one is narrative perspective. So narrative perspective simply means who is telling

00:30:29.600 the story and what is that person's relationship to the story emotionally, time and space? How is that

00:30:37.200 person related? And so in Hemingway's first two great novels, it was a first person narrator. And so

00:30:46.160 that person controlled the entire story. In For Whom the Bell Tolls, it is a third person narrator. So

00:30:52.620 Hemingway, when he started writing For Whom the Bell Tolls, he started writing it in the first person, and

00:30:57.580 then he changed it to third person. And the benefit of that for Hemingway, and even though Hemingway

00:31:04.740 during the writing of this novel said, I don't like writing like God, I don't like being omniscient.

00:31:10.320 But in this case, he was. And we have several moments in the novel, especially towards the end,

00:31:16.800 where we're following an entirely different character during a scene where Robert Jordan

00:31:23.220 would not be present, would not have been able to witness what was going on. In fact, one of the most

00:31:29.260 famous scenes is El Sordo's Last Stand. This is the scene that gave Metallica the inspiration for

00:31:37.480 For Whom the Bell Tolls, that song. Well, it's a very famous set piece. Robert Jordan is not present.

00:31:44.940 And then the other thing towards the end, one of the big tensions in the plot is, will this guy Andres

00:31:52.660 be able to deliver a message to the general, which will call off the attack? Will he be able to get

00:32:00.640 through the bureaucracy and through the Republican lines? And we follow Andres. We leave Robert Jordan

00:32:09.820 entirely. And that is a kind of comfort that Hemingway did not have in his first two novels,

00:32:17.220 where he clung to the first person.

00:32:20.080 Yeah, this reminded me, writing in the third person, reminded me of, we had a podcast guest

00:32:25.640 on, we talked about Jane Austen. And then Jane Austen, one of her innovations was free indirect

00:32:30.600 style. So it's, you narrate in the third person, but the narration is sort of percolated through the

00:32:40.040 consciousness of one of the characters. And so this happens too, with For Whom the Bell Tolls,

00:32:44.520 Hemingway is using free indirect style. Whenever you see the narration in third person,

00:32:50.060 going on for Robert Jordan, like it's coming through Robert Jordan's eyes and like all his

00:32:54.820 fears and preoccupations.

00:32:57.220 That's exactly right. And then we'll get to a moment where he'll say, oh, this character did

00:33:02.560 not know that then, or would come to know this. So you're sort of plotting their consciousness and

00:33:08.860 their knowledge through time. So it's a little bit more of a complex thing. This is a sprawling war,

00:33:14.980 as we were saying at the beginning, is very complex. And Hemingway must have found it beneficial

00:33:19.980 to be able to, you know, investigate and enter into the motives and consciousness of various

00:33:29.180 characters.

00:33:30.420 Okay, so literary techniques, narrative styles use the reverse iceberg theory, the metacognition,

00:33:35.480 that's my favorite part. That's what makes this novel so gripping for me, at least,

00:33:39.460 and so appealing. Using the Spanish mixed with English, and then the third person kind of

00:33:44.700 different type of free indirect style. There's all sorts of famous episodes in this novel,

00:33:50.920 episodes of violence, like graphic depictions of violence. The one that stood out to me is Pilar.

00:33:57.220 So she's one of these guerrilla warriors. And Hemingway has her recount this execution

00:34:03.560 of fascists in her, I guess it was her hometown. Is there any significance to the fact that Hemingway

00:34:09.340 had a female character recount this story of violence?

00:34:13.160 Yeah, I think that's extraordinary that she's essentially the leader of their gang. And when

00:34:21.240 Robert Jordan comes and presents the mission, I'm here as an outsider, and we have to blow this

00:34:28.560 bridge, which is going to be amazingly dangerous. If Pilar had overruled it, they wouldn't have done

00:34:34.700 it. Jordan would have had to find other people to do it. So Pilar is sort of, she finds herself,

00:34:40.720 she believes in Robert Jordan, and she's aligned with him. And she is a strategist. So in many ways,

00:34:48.480 she is protecting the rest of the cast of characters that we've come to know. So whenever Hemingway is

00:34:56.360 derided for some of his female characters, and there's certainly, we can have that debate and

00:35:03.440 go on a case-by-case basis, Pilar is a woman of great strength, of enormous heart. And so she's just

00:35:14.300 a wonderful character. I don't know who that would make people think of. The way she's described it

00:35:21.580 almost is like Hemingway is describing either Gertrude Stein or his own mother. If you just

00:35:28.880 look at her physical description, that actually resonates. Those two very powerful figures in

00:35:36.360 Hemingway's life that he would have a sort of a love-hate relationship with. There's also the figure

00:35:42.640 of La Passionaria who was a female kind of rabble rouser, somebody who galvanized the Republic during 1.00

00:35:51.480 the Spanish Civil War. And Pilar might be emblematic of a figure like that. So she's essential to this

00:35:59.500 novel. Yeah, she's one of my favorite characters. I like her a lot. And so Brett, the moment that

00:36:05.580 you're talking about is also, maybe we can talk about it for just a minute. The episode that she's

00:36:11.200 describing is the way that the Republic in a small town, which is not mentioned, overthrows

00:36:21.060 the fascist control of that town. And the way they do it is essentially by massacring the town leaders,

00:36:28.900 including the religious officials. So I guess one of the motivations for the Spanish Civil War is that

00:36:37.280 the workers of Spain, the disparity between the owners and the laborers was so egregious that this

00:36:46.440 motivated this kind of dispute. And so when the workers, the peasants are trying to overthrow the

00:36:55.400 fascists, and Pilar is recounting this anecdote in painstaking detail. These guys go through a gauntlet

00:37:04.960 where they're essentially stabbing them with pitchforks, shooting them, tossing them off cliffs,

00:37:13.320 and it's doing it, it's really being described in painstaking detail that really impresses Robert

00:37:21.720 Jordan. He's really learning about the brutal nature. In fact, and just to extend the point,

00:37:28.180 Hemingway is not shying away with talking about the brutal nature of Republican tactics.

00:37:36.840 So I think that's an important advancement of this novel, that he's not suggesting that everyone

00:37:44.560 on my side is noble and pure, and everybody on the other side is evil. When he talks about this

00:37:53.840 episode that Pilar is telling about the massacre of the fascists, you can gain sympathy for the people

00:38:03.140 who oppressed all of the townspeople. It's a very slippery presentation of this moment.

00:38:09.900 Yeah, I thought it was interesting how Pilar described it. I think Hemingway did a great job

00:38:13.900 of capturing how violence can be. At the beginning of this massacre, the townspeople weren't really into

00:38:21.120 it. They were kind of like, oh, you know, I don't feel good throwing this guy off a cliff and

00:38:25.460 stabbing him. But then he said there reached a moment where it all turned. The crowd mentality took

00:38:31.820 over and no one had a problem with it. It just became, it wasn't like individuals doing this. It

00:38:37.080 was just like this new crowd entity that was doing this. And so it dispersed, it dispersed accountability.

00:38:43.940 It's mob mentality. And they were drunk. And they were laughing. And so Pilar is really disquieted

00:38:54.640 by this. I mean, she's obviously, nobody needs to say, she's obviously on the side of overthrowing 0.95

00:39:01.200 the fascists so that the town can get liberty back. But on the other hand, she's saying it's making me

00:39:08.820 sick to my stomach. And, you know, Brett, you'll remember that Robert Jordan has these discussions

00:39:14.600 with other characters in the novel. It's like, how do you feel about killing people? How, you know,

00:39:19.840 how does it make you feel, even if it's the enemy? And some people say, I love it. And other people

00:39:24.700 don't think about it. And then other people, it tortures their conscience to do things like that.

00:39:31.160 So Hemingway is, you know, for whom the bell tolls really does capture that kind of complexity.

00:39:37.260 And I also think you did a good job of describing how in war, there are some people who aren't

00:39:42.580 fighting or doing violence for any ideals. They're just doing violence because they like

00:39:46.620 violence. There's a lot of people, a lot of these peasants, they were anarchists, basically. They

00:39:51.320 didn't care about the Republican cause. They were just glad they got to do some stuff for a while

00:39:56.900 and get away with it. That's exactly right. Yep. And these scenes of violence,

00:40:01.380 this is connected to Hemingway's aesthetic of witnessing violence. What is that?

00:40:05.620 Yeah, I think this is, to me, one of the most important career-long challenges that Hemingway

00:40:12.260 gave himself. So in Death in the Afternoon, which is that bullfighting treatise I was talking about

00:40:19.600 earlier, he said, I wanted to go to the bullfights because I wanted to look at death. I wanted to look

00:40:26.680 at violence and challenge myself not to turn away. No writer can turn away from violence. You have to look

00:40:34.280 at the world in all of its gruesome horror. And I mean, that may sound a little bit over the top,

00:40:42.500 but you know, that was Hemingway. And so one of the things that emerges from Pilar's scene, and there

00:40:48.240 are other examples too, is Pilar is always careful to talk about what she saw, what she tried to see

00:40:58.900 and couldn't see, what was kept from her view. And so she actually talks about standing on a chair so she

00:41:06.600 could look through the window and see other people being executed. It's almost like she wants to bear 0.52

00:41:12.180 witness. She wants to take that responsibility. One of the great examples of this, and oh, and before I want

00:41:21.020 to mention one aspect of this in Hemingway's life, but just one final point about that episode, Robert

00:41:27.660 Jordan, for his own part, tells a story about when he is a child. And apparently there was some kind of

00:41:36.020 a racial lynching. And Robert Jordan was a little kid and wanted to see it. And his mother pulled him

00:41:43.300 away from the window, pulled him away from it. He says, so I saw no more. But it shows that his instinct

00:41:49.060 was there. He wanted to see it. He had the curiosity. He didn't want to turn his eyes at

00:41:55.020 violence. And just to punctuate this idea, in his posthumous novel, The Garden of Eden, there is an

00:42:04.440 unbelievable unpublished sentence that says, I've been to the Boulevard Arago at 5 a.m. and I've heard

00:42:12.160 the thud. And I love that sentence because, so the Boulevard Arago was where they had the public

00:42:19.880 guillotine in France, in Paris. And for Hemingway to say that he went there at 5 a.m.,

00:42:29.120 obviously he went there intentionally, right? That he sought out a public execution. He wanted to see

00:42:37.260 it happen. That he wasn't, he's like, I'll just absorb the good things in life or the pleasant

00:42:43.400 things. If he wanted to be a real writer, a war writer, somebody who told the truth, a realist,

00:42:51.720 you have to observe the world in all of its unpleasantness and all of its horror.

00:42:59.420 Okay. So the killing of the fascist, great scene of this aesthetic of witnessing violence.

00:43:03.520 You talk about one of my other favorite scenes, just Robert Jordan prepping to blow up the bridge

00:43:07.700 and actually blowing it up. It's just so gripping. Once you get to that point, you can't put the book

00:43:11.580 down. You want to keep reading because you get to see Robert Jordan's thoughts as he's doing this

00:43:16.180 high stress thing. He just becomes instantly relatable in the way Hemingway uses that metacognition

00:43:21.680 to describe it. I'm curious, are there good guys and bad guys in this novel? Like what's the moral code

00:43:27.740 in for whom the bell tolls? So I don't want to equivocate Brett. I want to answer this in two

00:43:34.080 ways though. I mean, of course there are good guys and bad guys and a fascist is never going to be a

00:43:39.200 good guy and we're always going to root against them. The second, the other hand is that there is

00:43:48.380 humanity in both of them. He's not presenting one as a monster and the other people as angelic.

00:44:00.040 It's helpful to remind ourselves that the bad guys think they're good guys and the bad guys think

00:44:07.260 the good guys are bad guys. So it's moral subjectivity, right? A bad guy doesn't wake up

00:44:14.140 in the morning and say, I'm going to go do bad things. He thinks he's doing good things. And I mean,

00:44:20.660 I think most of the time that's, that is the case. And so people on the other side of

00:44:27.840 the war, on the other side of the line are fighting for something that they believe in just like you are.

00:44:36.660 And you have every right to call that evil and despicable, but there is a humanity to it. And a great

00:44:43.580 example. And this is, this is the reason why I believe for whom the bell tolls kind of transcends

00:44:49.360 any kind of a propaganda or didactic book. Do you remember that moment where Robert Jordan and Maria,

00:44:57.460 they wake up in the morning and there's a cavalry man that Robert Jordan has to kill.

00:45:02.640 Right.

00:45:03.600 So, okay, good. He killed one of the bad guys, right? We're all happy that he killed one of the bad guys. 0.70

00:45:07.860 And, and maybe 30 pages later, I'm guessing he goes through the letters and the, the material from

00:45:16.780 this dead cavalry man's body. And he learns about him and he learns about his family and who he was,

00:45:23.640 what town he's from. And that extra step reminds Robert Jordan that he's just killed a person,

00:45:31.640 right? He's just, of course, he's done his job. He did a really good thing. He saved his friends,

00:45:36.860 but he killed somebody else's friend who was doing his job. There's a great sentence in this

00:45:44.640 novel. There's no one thing that's true. There's no one thing that's true. It's all true. You don't

00:45:52.140 own the only truth. And what the other person holds to be true is not false necessarily, right? That we

00:45:59.300 have this, life is a lot more complex than that. And even war is more complex than that.

00:46:05.860 So Hemingway had this idea of writing one true sentence. In fact, your podcast called one true

00:46:10.660 podcast. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And you asked your guests, you know, what's your favorite one

00:46:15.260 true sentence from Hemingway? Right. What do you think was Hemingway's one true sentence in for whom

00:46:20.000 the bell tolls? Okay. So mine is in chapter 42. So I think there's only 43 chapters in this novel.

00:46:28.160 And I find this to be one of the most beautiful moments. So please allow me to read from chapter

00:46:34.680 42. In their steel helmets, riding in the trucks in the dark towards something that they only knew was

00:46:43.020 an attack. Their faces were drawn with each man's own problem in the dark. And the light revealed them

00:46:51.360 as they would not have looked in day from shame to show it to each other until the bombardment and

00:46:58.240 the attack would commence and no man would think about his face. Now, I wonder, taken out of context, how

00:47:06.200 many people would identify that as a Hemingway sentence? Because it is so long and so detailed and

00:47:14.580 complex, but it is also so insightful into the psychology of the man at war. What I love about this is

00:47:24.180 their faces were drawn with each man's own problem. It's almost like you can look at somebody, you can

00:47:31.800 look at a group of people and you can see that they're concerned. You can see that they're worried or even

00:47:38.000 scared. But then you go the next step and say they're all scared in a separate individual way.

00:47:45.520 I find that so incredible. So that is my choice for the sentence that rings truest and for whom the

00:47:53.020 bell tolls. Okay. So mine was, this actually, this was John McCain's favorite sentence. Oh, great.

00:48:00.260 The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for. And I hate very much to leave it. I like that

00:48:06.420 sentence because it reminded me of another one of my other favorite sentences and another one of my

00:48:10.340 favorite novels, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. The character there, Augustus McRae, he says,

00:48:16.480 it's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times. I just like that idea. It's, it's, I love the idea

00:48:22.820 that the world can suck sometimes, but even though it can be terrible, it's still, I don't regret being

00:48:31.040 here. I love it. I think it's fantastic. And you have to embrace, like you said, there's no one true

00:48:36.100 thing. You have to embrace all of it. And I just like that idea that Robert Jordan conveys.

00:48:41.400 I love that. And Mark Salter is in, is in our book, One True Sentence. And that's the sentence

00:48:46.700 that he chose. It's the world is a fine place and worth the fighting for. And yeah. And Gus in Lonesome

00:48:52.840 Dove has that sort of world weary, but sort of a broader acceptance to it. And I, I think that is,

00:49:00.880 that's a great, it is a great philosophy. I also want to kind of juxtapose that with

00:49:05.820 A Farewell to Arms, where Frederick Henry is the protagonist. And why did he get into the war?

00:49:13.740 He's like, I don't know. I was in Italy. I spoke Italian. You know, why not? He kind of like

00:49:19.020 stumbled into the war. And meanwhile, you have Robert Jordan saying, blowing this bridge

00:49:24.720 is the pivot point of the rest of the world. The whole world will depend on the successful

00:49:32.300 execution of this action. So the commitment to a cause, and there's that episode where he's saying,

00:49:38.660 being part of something bigger than yourself is like being at Chartres Cathedral. It's, you know,

00:49:47.800 seeing great art. It's these moments of transcendence when you give yourself, when your life gets

00:49:55.060 enriched because you're giving yourself to something greater than just yourself. And I think that's what

00:50:01.520 McCain was getting at. And that quote really does exemplify that. Well, Mark, this has been a great

00:50:06.500 conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work? Well, the first wave of One True

00:50:11.580 Sentence choices and episodes is in a book called One True Sentence, Writers and Readers on Hemingway's

00:50:19.960 Art. And Mark Salter is in there discussing that McCain quote. So I would urge that book if you're

00:50:28.480 interested at all in Hemingway. And our podcast is One True Podcast, which is available anywhere you get

00:50:34.880 your podcasts. Fantastic. Well, Mark Torino, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:50:38.800 Brett, always a pleasure.

00:50:39.820 My guest today is Mark Torino. He's a Hemingway scholar and the author of multiple books on

00:50:44.460 Hemingway. His latest book that he edited is One True Sentence, Writers and Readers on Hemingway's

00:50:49.200 Art. It's available on Amazon.com. Also check out his podcast, One True Podcast, available on all

00:50:54.180 podcast platforms. And check out our show notes at aom.is slash tolls, where you find links to

00:50:59.000 resources when we delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM

00:51:06.620 Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanlies.com, where you find our

00:51:09.780 podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty

00:51:13.260 much anything you think of. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take

00:51:16.480 one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've

00:51:19.700 done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member

00:51:23.220 who you think we get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:51:26.620 Until next time, it's Brett McKay, reminding you to not listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've

00:51:30.760 heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - August 28, 2023

For Whom The Bell Tolls

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