80 Years Ago: For Whom The Bell Tolls
Today in 1940, Ernest Hemingway published a novel set during the Spanish Civil War
Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls — published 80 years ago today — tells the story of an American who joins the anti-fascist cause in the Spanish Civil War. We could spend crucial time summarizing the plot, but let’s skip all that and get to the heart of the matter: What makes this novel unique?
People often say Hemingway is a stark minimalist. Unsparing critics accuse him of having no style at all. But this novel exposes the folly of such jabs. Let’s pick a sentence at random. Here’s a major character, Pablo, speaking near the end of the novel:
“I am sorry for having taken thy material... It was an equivocation.”
What an odd sentence! First off, that word thy jumps out. Hemingway uses it throughout the novel. He likes these outdated word, thy and thee, seemingly to communicate a nuance of the Spanish language: the distinction between informal and formal pronouns. English no longer has this distinction, so he adopts the archaic term.
There is another odd word in that sentence: equivocation. It makes no sense in the context of the story. In English “equivocation” means to use ambiguous language to conceal the truth. (Clever innuendo, Ernie!) But you do not apologize for “ambiguous language” if accused of theft. The sentence only makes sense if you know there is a Spanish word, equivocación, which means “error” or “mistake.”
So what’s going on here? First, let’s imagine how one might normally write the sentence above. If you were a plainspoken minimalist, you might write like so:
“I am sorry for taking your things... It was a mistake.”
But Hemingway uses an awkward stilted style throughout the novel. Why? Here’s my theory: He wants to make it sound like a bad translation of a Spanish novel. Which is a wild idea!
Just one more example: The phrase “what passes that” is used throughout. It’s an awkward expression that seems to be a literal translation of the Spanish construction qué pasa que. An English interpreter would simply translate that as “what happens.” But Hemingway pretends to transliterate it word-for-word — like a poor translator would do.
To hammer home the joke, he makes it super obvious: The lead character is a college instructor from America. What does he teach? Spanish.
Did you know? Hemingway himself handpicked Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman for their roles in the 1943 movie version. Both were nominated for Oscars.
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40 Years Ago Today: Kim Kardashian (1980–) was born in the hamlet of Los Angeles. She would become best known, perhaps, as a friend and stylist of Paris Hilton.
500 Years Ago Today: Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521) became the first European to sail around the tip of South America. Although often credited as the first person to circumnavigate the globe, Magellan actually died in the Philippines before completing the trip back to Spain.
