Hiya! Today, I share some thoughts from when I read Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Spoiler: Despite being a combat veteran myself, I'm not that into it...
Issue 1: For all of Hemingway's simplicity of language, for which he is much renowned and idolized, For Whom the Bell Tolls is convoluted with side conversations, explorations of Spanish culture, and with people talking and talking and talking. As enlightening as all of this is, it does not move the story along very quickly by our modern tastes nor does it, I think, truly enlighten us, the readers, in a manner that action, reaction and consequence can (active elements of a story). Not to say these active elements aren't in Hemingway's novel, but it seems he is forcing a lot of subject matter and themes (such as death, Christianity and other ideas of war) through his character's dialogue. Thus requiring a lot of dialogue lines and a lot of extra reading and, I'm daring to say it in a piece about Hemingway, extraneous words.
Issue 1: For all of Hemingway's simplicity of language, for which he is much renowned and idolized, For Whom the Bell Tolls is convoluted with side conversations, explorations of Spanish culture, and with people talking and talking and talking. As enlightening as all of this is, it does not move the story along very quickly by our modern tastes nor does it, I think, truly enlighten us, the readers, in a manner that action, reaction and consequence can (active elements of a story). Not to say these active elements aren't in Hemingway's novel, but it seems he is forcing a lot of subject matter and themes (such as death, Christianity and other ideas of war) through his character's dialogue. Thus requiring a lot of dialogue lines and a lot of extra reading and, I'm daring to say it in a piece about Hemingway, extraneous words.
Kudos 1: For all of Hemingway's absence of active elements in his plot, the absence of the actual conflict (the war) throughout the beginning of the story actually does strike me as somewhat real.
That's how a lot of wars are actually fought. There is a lot of downtime, waiting and empty space filled with nonchalant chatter.
Issue 2: The dialogue itself sounds forced to me. Whether it's Pilar or Maria or Robert Jordan saying something of moral or intuitive importance about something which they observe (in a sort of fateful, one-sentence clip usually at the end of a long spiel of dialogue), it all just sounds forced. The character's manner of speaking makes For Whom the Bell Tolls seem much more of a fantasy than a real war novel.
Issue 3: There are a lot of thee's and thou's in the dialogue itself. I've read that this is a literal translation of the dialect the character's are speaking. But it comes across, to my ears, as poetic overkill. Even if that is the literal or figurative translation of that cultural corner of Spain, it does not translate into English sounding like an actual person's language, whether it truly is or not. The true art of translation, I believe, communicates the spirit of the speaker's words, not necessarily their literal or figurative meaning. Hemingway's translation in English sounds controlled, very edited and, all in all, false.
I don't think I'm finishing this one. (I only made it up to Ch. 10.) I feel kind of bad not trying a little harder on a masterpiece like this, but I'm shelving it back for now. Bye, bye Spanish Civil War. I wish Hemingway maybe hadn't been so caught up in writing a great novel and perhaps was more interested in writing just a good story.