英文介绍 Introduction
Ernest Hemingway is a giant of modern literature. Among twentieth-century American fiction writers, his work is most often compared to that of his contemporaries William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Combined with his outstanding short stories, Hemingway’s four 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)—comprise a contribution to modern fiction that is far more substantial than Fitzgerald’s and that approximates Faulkner’s.
Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature a few years before Hemingway received this recognition, but their respective approaches to fiction are so dissimilar that this belated receipt says little or nothing about Hemingway’s stature relative to that of Faulkner. When set alongside Faulkner’s Mississippi novels, Hemingway’s major works feature simpler structures and narrative voices/personae.
As or more important, Hemingway’s style, with its consistent use of short, concrete, direct prose and of scenes consisting exclusively of dialogue, gives his novels and short stories a distinctive accessibility that is immediately identifiable with the author. Owing to the direct character of both his style and his life-style, there is a tendency to cast Hemingway as a “representative” American writer whose work reflects the bold, forthright and rugged individualism of the American spirit in action.
His own background as a wounded veteran of World War I, as an engaged combatant in the fight against Fascism/Nazism, and as a “he-man” with a passion for outdoor adventures and other manly pursuits reinforce this association.
But this identification of Hemingway as a uniquely American genius is problematic. Although three of his major novels are told by and/or through American men, Hemingway’s protagonists are expatriates, and his fictional settings are in France, Italy, Spain, and later Cuba, rather than America itself.
While Hemingway’s early career benefited from his connections with Fitzgerald and (more so) with American novelist Sherwood Anderson, his aesthetic is actually closer to that shared by the transplanted American poets that he met in Paris during the 1920s; T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and, most crucially, Gertrude Stein. In this context, we must realize that Hemingway’s approach to the craft of fiction is direct but never blunt or just plain simple.
Hemingway’s text is the result of a painstaking selection process, each word performing an assigned function in the narrative. These choices of language, in turn, occur through the mind and experience of his novels’ central characters whether they serve explicitly as narrators of their experience or as focal characters from whose perspectives the story unfolds. The main working corollary of Hemingway’s “iceberg principle” is that the full meaning of the text is not limited to moving the plot forward: there is always a web of association and inference, a submerged reason behind the inclusion (or even the omission) of every detail.
We note, too, that although Hemingway’s novels usually follow a straightforward chronological progression as in the three days of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway does make use of summary accounts of the past, of memories related externally as stories, and of flashbacks. These devices lend further depth to his characters and create narrative structures that are not completely straightforward chronicles.
Hemingway is direct. But he is also quite subtle, and subtlety is not a trait that we ascribe to the American way. In the end, Hemingway is an international artist, a man who never relinquished his American identity but who entered new territories too broad and too deep to fit within the domain of any national culture.
译文:导言
欧内斯特·海明威是现代文学巨匠。在二十世纪的美国小说作家之中,他的作品常常被比作当代的福克纳和斯科特菲茨杰拉德。加上他出色的短篇小说,海明威的四大小说,《太阳照常升起》(1926年),《永别了,武器》(1929),《丧钟为谁而鸣》(1940)和《老人与海》(1952年),对现代小说的贡献远远超过斯科特菲茨杰拉德的小说,而接近福克纳的小说。
福克纳被授予诺贝尔文学奖,比海明威获得这样的承认要早几年,但他们各自小说的表现方式是如此不同,这个迟来的收据说知之甚少或海明威的地位相对于没有福克纳的。当以福克纳的小说《密西西比》为对比时,海明威的主要著作表现出更简明的结构和叙述人和事的语调。
或更重要的是,海明威的风格,短的,具体的,直接的散文和场景组成的完全一致使用的对话,使他的小说和短篇故事独特的无障碍是立即与作者身份。由于他的风格都和他生活的直接性质的风格,
有一种倾向把自己描绘成“代表”,美国作家,其工作反映了美国精神在行动大胆,坦率和个人主义海明威。
他自己的背景下进行的第一次世界大战老兵受伤,作为从事反法西斯斗争/纳粹主义战斗,并作为“他,男子是户外探险和其他男子气追求激情”加强这一关系。
但是,这种海明威作为一个独特的美国天才识别问题。虽然他的主要小说有3位是告诉和/或通过美国男子,海明威的主人公是外籍人士,他的小说设置在法国,意大利,西班牙和古巴后,是不是美国自己。
尽管海明威的早期职业生涯得益于与菲茨杰拉德的关系和(更是如此)与美国小说家舍伍德安德森,他的审美实际上是接近的移植,他在巴黎会见了美国在20世纪20年代诗人的共享,艾略特,庞德和最重要的是,格特鲁德斯泰因。在这种情况下,
我们必须认识到,海明威的办法来小说工艺是直接的,但从未钝或纯粹的简单。
海明威的文本是一个艰苦的选择的结果,每个单词表演叙述一个分配的功能。这些语言的选择,反过来,通过发生的思想和他的小说'是否符合他们的经验,作为叙述者或协调其观点的人物,故事情节的展开明确的中心人物经验。
主要工作海明威的“冰山原则”的必然结果是文本的全部意义不仅限于移动前进的阴谋:总是有结社和推理网络,列入背后的(甚至不作为)的淹没的原因每一个细节。
我们也注意到,尽管海明威的小说通常遵循的3天对他们来说,战地钟声一个简单的时间顺序进展,海明威也使过去的总结账户使用,相关的外部存储器的故事,和倒叙。
这些器件提供进一步的深度,他的人物,创造出不完全直接的叙事结构编年史。
海明威是直接。但他也相当微妙,微妙不是一个特点,我们归于美国的方式。最后,海明威是一个国际性的艺术家,一个人谁没有放弃他的美国身份,但谁进入太广太深以适应任何国家文化领域新的领域
《老人与海》主要内容
这是一场人与自然搏斗的惊心动魄的悲剧。老人每取得一点胜利都付出了惨重的代价,最后遭到无可挽救的失败。但是,从另外一种意义上来说,他又是一个胜利者。因为,他不屈服于命运,无论在怎么艰苦卓绝的环境里,他都凭着自己的勇气、毅力和智慧进行了奋勇的抗争。大马林鱼虽然没有保住,但他却捍卫了“人的灵魂的尊严”,显示了“一个人的能耐可以到达什么程度”,是一个胜利的失败者,一个失败的英雄。这样一个“硬汉子”形象,正是典型的海明威式的小说人物。在20世纪30年代以后发表的一些短篇小说里,海明威描写了一些拳击师、斗牛士、猎人等形象,在这些下层人物身上,他塑造了一种百折不挠、坚强不屈、敢于面对暴力和死亡的“硬汉子”性格,《老人与海》中桑地亚哥的形象就是这种性格的发展与升华。小说中的大海和鲨鱼象征着与人作对的社会与自然力量,而老人在与之进行的殊死搏斗中,表现了无与伦比的力量和勇气,不失人的尊严,虽败犹荣,精神上并没有被打败。可以说,这样一个形象,完美地体现了作者所说的“你尽可把他消灭掉,可就是打不败他”的思想。
[此贴子已经被作者于2010-5-19 9:20:47编辑过]