I finished this book last week. Honestly a masterpiece. A Farewell to Arms was written by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1929. That's 11 years after WWI for the history brains out there. And math brains to some extent... Hemingway was thirty when he wrote this by the way. Born 1899. Just made the 19th century. Yeah! Good for him. Thirty... Jeez that's young. What a genius. Right, well, characters.
Speaking of characters, tangent: here's a fun character for an anecdote. I was alright until the end, and then I finished and closed the cover, and no kidding, I was bawling my eyes out. I just couldn't stop crying. I really scared my entire family, they thought I was having a heart attack or something, but then I managed to choke out the words on maybe my sixth attempt: It was
such a good book! needless to say they were all exasperated and left immediately. I cry easily with books and films, but this was sobbing. I don't want to be a spoiler, but the ending's pretty depressing. But you could expect that from most war books, and anyways, it was more the entire book than the ending that had me crying; you know, when you close that cover and then someone asks you, "Are you finished?" and then that just does it; the entire book flashes through your mind and you see the intricacies and the painstaking weaving that goes through Hemingway's deceptively plain writing, and you see how the characters have developed, and developed together along with the war and with Italy, and with the back cover staring at you in old yellow kindness, you just have to start crying, and then it doesn't stop. And then you write a blog.
Right, well basically, it's a WWI book and a love story split into five books. The first has Lieutenant Fredric Henry on the Italian Front. He meets Catherine when his friend Rinaldi makes him play wingman, and then he eventually gets injured in the leg and he goes to a hospital. Book Two is in the hospital where Catherine gets to taking care of him, they fall madly in love, Catherine gets pregnant, and eventually Henry has to go back to the front. Then in Book Three, Henry goes back to the front and the Italians begin their massive retreat. The officers begin being shot, so Henry runs away. In Book Four, Henry has to lay low since he technically deserted, and so finally Henry meets up with Catherine and they eventually run away to Switzerland together when the war police come to arrest Henry. In Book Five, Henry and Catherine live quite happily in Switzerland until Catherine eventually has her baby but it was a miscarriage and she dies from two hemorrhages soon after.
So characters! Characters are the most important aspect of a book. Had to say it. It's really Fredric Henry and Catherine Barkley. Henry is the narrator and he is wonderful. Same with Catherine. The thing is though, Hemmingway is known for having rough, straight-forward writing, meaning even though it is written in first person, it doesn’t get all that intimate, and writing styles never get all that complicated. There are moments near the end, of course, when you really dive into the character Henry with internal monologues, or rather ramblings, scattered all over the place. And there are moments in the beginning when he gets drunk and the writing style changes dramatically, but that’s for a bit later. So anyways, since it’s rough and straight-forward, you have to base most everything about a character on his action or his speech. There is a lot of dialog in this book though. That’d be interesting to touch at later.
But, I did just now think of something to point out about Henry. There are a bunch of unanswered questions about him. That’s probably because Henry is such a Hemmingway, being all strong and controlled, rarely letting go of control. So the unanswered questions are things like why he really joined the Italian Army. You get stuff like he already was there, and he already knew Italian, and America didn’t enter until much later anyways, but you’d think there’d be an additional reason to him wanting to go to war in the first place, especially since it’s WWI, where there’s very little meaning in war, at least morally. Later on he said he joined because he was stupid, but that really doesn’t suffice either. Considering how he changes through the book and how at the beginning he seems like an all right person but not entirely present, you could get the sense that maybe there was something missing or hurting that drove him to the war. That’s just a conjecture though. Just throwing it out there; these things are always interesting: how much you know of a character’s past, as in before the book started, even in the past tense; there’s always some chronological order, even in absurdist novels, which this is definitely not. You could place significance to it and then draw a bunch of conclusions from it, like once you’re in war, or once you’re in love, the past is no longer you’re past and you are a new person with a second life, of new hopes for the love and new darkness for the latter, or something like that. Nice and rich, huh? But yeah, these messages are always possible, and might even be true, at some points of the book at least, but they rarely have enough evidence to be decided as the sole purpose of the book.
There is interest in how he changes. In the beginning, Henry is somewhat of a bore, really. He is just at the front, but not even, stuck more in politics and the duty of keeping order; he’s an ambulance driver, for crying out loud; definitely not the typical war novel hero. There’s more interested in the other characters, like Rinaldi and the priest. They’d be nice to talk of too. But anyways, Henry changes dramatically by the end of the book, with love and with war. Henry’s all cool with Catherine in the beginning, but as he gets more and more infatuated with her, you get to see him acting more interestingly. Well, we hear him, I suppose then, rather than watch him since the actions because of love are pretty straight-forward granted they now have an initiative that Henry somewhat missed before, being Henry does anything Catherine asks and does anything for her sake. For example, concerning speech, we see him speaking very romantically and illogically such as when Cat and he talk about how they can think of themselves as married. It’s very cute actually, something you wouldn’t picture Henry ever saying in the beginning, or as a matter of fact, Hemingway writing, but then again it is written in a very Hemingway fashion: quotations following quotations with nothing more said.
Then there is the war that changes him, naturally. He learns how awful it is, and there’s that great gap from the war made by Book Two, and the war just evolves so quickly; it’s really like a character of its own. He manages to switch back onto war mode in Book Three, but you start to see him really losing control around the desertion scene. He seems some Germans and the guys and him just assume their lives are now lost, but they keep going and one of them dies shot by some frightened Italians that just shoot at anything by now. So they keep going and meet two other people, and so Henry, being a Tenente (lieutenant), takes charge. But then the two run off and Henry goes off and shoots at them, killing one, with no remorse of course. It’s a pretty frightening scene, if you really think about it. This is a change action-wise. He is a very mild person all around, Henry. This one time a person in the bunk on top of him starts bleeding down on him with a hemorrhage, and Henry just stays there very calmly, and when the guy dies, he says it strongly and directly. But then we see a desertion and he goes ahead shooting, wanting to kill. He goes back to normal after that though, and stays that way, acting in accordance, morally, refusing to steal from deserted houses, only taking what he needs: food. It’s actually quite frightening how Henry acts so normally throughout Book Three. Book Two ends with Catherine and Henry being separated by the war, and her being pregnant, you’d expect Henry to be broken in the war; you’d expect it to be impossible for Henry to get back to survival war mode, but it seems not. He snaps right back, with stuffing brush under tires and keeping clear of thoughts of Catherine. Then the retreat comes and the shooting of the Officers. One of his men already surrendered to the Austrians, and Henry took that alright, though he may have shot him if he had the chance, and he goes off seeing other Tenentes get shot, and so he jumps into a river and gets away after being shot at a lot. Then he’s on a train, and you finally see it. I guess I ought to just write at least this bit straight out from the book. It’s a turning point. Strong Henry breaks a bit, though still together physically; it is but in mentality, war mentality that he falls. All this terrible stuff that he let pass with the calmest of demeanors seems to have been piling up, and there it is on the train, let loose for once. Of course it happened on a train. It always happens on a train, alone, sitting, with country passing before unseeing eyes, with that window right there for you to gaze out of with glassy eyes, and the sound of the machine around you, taking you away with the monotonous hums; that is where you get to breaking. Actually, lets talk a bit more of this breaking first.
It starts when he hits the river, and that is shown by the opening up of the narration, or rather, Henry’s thoughts, to the more abstract, with philosophizing that does not match the directness of the typical Henry and typical Hemingway. Hemingway actually gives to the romantic at the end of the book, not too much, but he does, and it’s a great middle-ground. Here’s a bit after e reaches land. “I had done half the retreat on foot and swum part of the Tagliamento with his knee. It was his knee all right. The other knee was mine. Doctors did things to you and then it was not your body any more. The head was mine and the inside of the belly. It was hungry in there. I could feel it run over on itself. The head was mine, but not to use, not to think with; only to remember and not too much remember.” Poetic, huh. Then thoughts of Catherine finally break in at this end of Book Three. We discover the reason for her absence in Henry’s thoughts: he had been restricting it due to that he “knew I would get crazy if I thought about her when I was not sure yet I would see her” It’s structures SO well! It’s amazing, isn’t it? Literally, I can’t breathe when I’m reading it, or right now in writing it. I’m not breathing. It’s so amazing. I can’t get over it. The structure is to die for. I would die for it actually. It’s a masterpiece. It’s so amazing. Haha, I just took a deep breath because I started feeling dizzy. It’s so amazing. Hemingway, he makes you question why he’s not thinking about Catherine all through Book Three, and he makes you question how Henry could possibly be so calm about all of it, and how he could possibly be coping, and had he forgotten about Catherine? No, of course he hadn’t. But why isn’t he thinking about her? Maybe he is, but Hemingway isn’t recording it down. Why not? Maybe Henry doesn’t let himself think about her. Maybe. And then this part comes, after himself deserting and everything falling to pieces, the Italians shooting their own people, and this happens, and it’s amazing, how it is finally revealed and we know things are changing because it does, even though it is just a thought, we all know things are going to change, and Henry’s thoughts change, finally breaking loose after such a long freeze, and IT’S SO AMAZING! Wow, okay, moving on.
After thoughts of Catherine, comes this: “You did not love the floor of a flat-car nor guns with canvas jackets and the smell of vaselined metal or a canvas that rain leaked through, although it is very fine under a canvas and pleasant with guns; but you loved someone else whom now you knew was not even to be pretended there; you seeing now very clearly and coldly – not so coldly as clearly and emptily. You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present when one army moved back and another came forward. You had lost your cars and your men as a floorwalker loses the stock of his department in a fire. There was, however no insurance. You were out of it now. You had no more obligation. If they shot floorwalkers after a fire in the department store because they spoke with an accent they had always had, then certainly the floorwalkers would not be expected to return when the store opened again for business. They might seek other employment; if there was any other employment and the police did not get them. Anger washed away in the river along with any obligation.” Tangent: I just walked away and hugged my entire family because it’s structured, SO WELL! Right, well, let’s talk about these last two enormous quotations. Great, so the first one about the knee, you see he’s starting to open up a bit, to think more and Hemingway to write more. Henry always thinks about how long a certain hunk of cheese would last him, and where Britain is on the front. That’s because he has to. Now he’s deserted, and he thinks about other things, having been through the river. You get a lot more of this later on, for example, his brain rant on whisky later on. Tangent: Consider whether Henry is an alcoholic or not.
Alright, well, he thinks of his body and his knee, and starts coming up with these accepted truths about doctors and knees, and it’s all very interesting, extremely, you could write a novel about a fixed knee, but in the circumstances, what’s vital is that he says it. Henry gets very metaphorical. He probably is always talking about a bigger picture when his mind is loose like this, but the thing with big pictures is that they mean so much less when you use the big words. Henry lets it be quiet, and Hemingway lets the readers figure it out for themselves. The knee is Henry separating himself from the war, I suppose. It’s him feeling different, foreign, like he doesn’t belong to this body, this body that is a Tenente, that is being shot at, that is in WWI, and idiot’s war, and that is wearing this coat of stars away from his girl, his life, and his sense. This is one of those meanings like I talked about before though. It could be said but not completely proven. So many more of these generalizations could be made off the knee. This is just mine. What is also wonderful about the first quotation is that bit about hunger. It pops up a lot more, but I just didn’t include them for the sake of conciseness (how ironic is that?) This hunger flows through Book Three, but mostly I this part. A soldier’s life is his food. That’s a fact. You’ve got more chance of living if you’re not hungry, obviously, and a soldier’s life depends arguably more on his food than his skill, at least in this war. It’s also a simple thing. All animals whine when they are hungry. Babies cry when they are hungry. It’s nice and simple. It breaks through complexity too. Henry is hungry and as philosophical as he gets, he still feels hungry. Hunger also is covered by excitement. You don’t think about food when you’re being shot at, for example. Henry can now think about food. The excitement is gone, and what’s left is desolation. There’s a nice exaggeration for you all, but I think it’s true. Henry’s too tough to admit it though. Also, in war, you don’t complain about hunger until you’re starving. Henry is starving, but he’s not in war anymore, so it doesn’t matter anyhow. He doesn’t realize it for a while after, but he is no longer concerned with the war. He is separate.
Quotation #2: genius, metaphorical, grand, and clear. Genius on the part of Hemingway, of course, though Henry too. I don’t know how much I have the right to feel proud of Hemingway, but I am so proud of him for writing in the “you”. Henry is obviously talking about himself, but the you also extends this truth to everybody, which is so great of Henry with his humility that is everlasting, but also so useful in showing how overwhelming all this can be. You don’t complain in the army. There’s a nice cliché for you. But sometimes, you have to, and then there comes the need to feel just how hurt, tired, and broken you are, which is very difficult to do when it is true. Thus Henry thinks in the “you” to protect himself and through the metaphor of the floorwalker. A floorwalker is a senior employee of a large store who assists customers and supervises salespeople by the way, if anyone was confused. Courtesy of Google Dictionary, great place. So floorwalker’s a pretty random and insignificant thing to compare yourself to. There’s that humility again. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a floorwalker, it’s just no knight or rock star. But yes. Henry is now a floorwalker that had a fire at his store, which speaks in an accent, which gets shot for it, and then is irked about getting asked to work again. From the beginning of the quote you have the “you”, and Henry describes the canvas jackets and guns, which is obviously him, and the lying on stomach. The detail is there for a reason, clearly, and that is to show that is now, in this very specific state, that this realization occurs, that he is done with the war. He doesn’t say it yet, but that’s what it is, and the canvas doesn’t matter much, nor the stomach, but it matters in saying that it is now, not the last few hours or days, but now. The “someone else” is Catherine, and he just talked about her before, and talked about loving floors, and you get to see how Henry’s drifted into this topic. It’s very neatly done. Then you get the clearly and coldly, or rather clearly and emptily. The dash is significant in pointing out the difference between coldly and emptily. Coldly in this sense means cynically, without feeling, clearly and just the truth, though you can feel emotions that lack warmth, I suppose, being icy vehemence or something, though I do admit vehemence could be burning, but cold seems so much scarier. Emptily means without feeling too. So what’s the difference? It is the connotations to them; that’s why I said cynically, since that has a negative connotation too. When a person sees a fact coldly and cynically, people feel a bit scared of them or harsh towards them, as though they are uncaring or course in not sympathizing. People would look at emptily with sympathy though, because it’s saddening to see a person without the capability of feeling. There’s another difference. Emptiness implies that something had emptied them, and coldly is more like growing cold, which, again, I admit is saddening too, so this argument is rather wishy-washy, but in context, I suppose Henry has been emptied rather than cooled. He is exhausted of power to cope, or lie to himself to see calmness in the destruction and corruption before him. Right, so Henry is empty, in missing his love and missing his shop and beliefs. He has been let down by the Italians, seeing them acting inhumane, senselessly and cowardly. It’s all very overwhelming see, so you get the “you” and the metaphor. Now you get that he could either come out of his emptiness and feel anger, or depression, or strength to lie and thus return to the army somehow to finish off the war, or freedom from the culprit, or he could stay in the emptiness, like Paul from All Quiet on the Western Front or Gene from A Separate Peace. Paul died after reaching this disillusioned emptiness. Gene lived fifteen years until he finally got out of emptiness to absolve himself for putting himself in it and feel finally a freedom from obligation. That’s what Henry does. “Anger washed away in the river along with any obligation.” Very A Separate Peace, actually, because of the river thing. Anyways, yes, Henry does absolve the enemy, war, by letting go of his anger, and he thus washes his hands of war and moves on to the other half of this book: love. War lost, it’s love.
So then we go on like this for a bit and you get to our third quote. You’ll get why I’m going on about A Separate Peace now. He goes to Milan and has some of that Hemingway dialog with back and forth quotations lacking in any narration to couple it with thought. Well, without the negative connotation of lacking, of course; it works very well for the emptiness. There’s a chapter of that, and then he gets on a train to Stresa. Yes, finally the train. Catherine’s in Stresa, that’s why he’s going. He feels strange in civilian clothes, very All Quiet on the Western Front, and then goes: “They smelled of tobacco and as I sat in the compartment and looked out the window the new hat felt vey new and the clothes very old. I myself felt as sad as the wet Lombard country that was outside through the window. There were some aviators in the compartment who did not think much of me. They avoided looking at me and were very scornful of a civilian my age. I did not feel insulted. In the old days I would have insulted them and picked a fight. They got off at Gallarate and I was glad to be alone. I had the paper but I did not read it because I did not want to read about the war. I was going to forget the war. I had made a separate peace. I felt damned lonely and was glad when the train got to Stresa.” See it? Yeah, it’s awesome.
So first there’s that thing about the clothes, and you do feel the roughness of Hemingway that I stress so much again. It’s all very blunt and he never goes into what something might mean. He just writes it. For example, he speaks of the window and then the new clothes as though they are supposed to be related. They are, but you have to ask yourself the question, and then interpret to get the connection, and of course, there is no right answer. I think the window has more to do with allowing his mind to loosen up and widen, since he sees the country passing with nothing to grab onto but for the truth of how large the world is, and he gets to feeling himself more than his reactions to the war or to love, and he then floats on to the idea of clothes. See windows are very good in literature, especially in these situations, because in these situations, characters rarely concentrate on what is actually outside a window, or if they do, the window never fails to add more meaning to what they see. In this case, he sees the Lombard country, but the train has a passing quickly and the mirror has it distant, away and outside. The window is a barrier, like a mirror; you could see yourself across it, in the wet Lombard country, but it is still only a reflection, a suggestion instead of a victory. I don’t know if any of that made sense by the way. Sorry, but most of what I say doesn’t make sense, as long as what I’m saying interests me, that is.
Anyways, we have the window mentioned again along with the sadness, which is so wonderfully put, considering he straight out says he’s sad instead of letting it be expressed by some extended metaphor or whatnot. He also says he’s “sad” instead of depressed, or disillusioned, or dismal, or despondent, or doleful, or any other pretty d-word. He is sad. That’s when you know you’re really sad. When you actually say sad instead of coloring it up, since the d-words are more descriptive and tell more and are nice for specificity, but they own too much soundness for sadness. When you’re any d-word really, you don’t say the d-word, you just say sad. The aviators serve for some nice irony and lets you sympathize for Henry a bit, but then he says he doesn’t feel insulted, which makes you sympathize for him even more, him being so empty and all. Then you have him thinking about his past self, giving an idea of aged weariness to Henry, even though he’s really young. He’s somewhat of a burnout now, I suppose, which is again, very sad; he’s a veteran made out of a youth. Like Gene. Then there’s the paper, which is followed by a “did not”, a “because”, another “did not”, and then “the war”. The structure here is so wonderful since I do see a great significance in the word “because”, especially sandwiched between two did not’s and even more when it follows a completely separate sentence about aviators. It’s so choppy see, since first of all it’s stuck in right after the aviators without any soft transition. Then there’s the did not’s which are each so choppy too because the words are so simple that you’d expect some great writer to avoid them, and here Hemingway goes using them twice each. Then there’s the “because” which is the choppiest you could get. I mean, “because” makes any sentence sounds like a middle-school thesis statement, something straight out of the sixth grade highlighted in green with red pen all over it (which is not a good thing.) Combining it all, you get this nice insane bluntness that brings across how plainly he feels the need to avoid the war. This is just how he thinks now, I suppose, Henry. No beauty, no fluidity, no decoration, just words next to words that make sense.
Then there’s the separate peace. He finally admits that he wants to forget the war, that he is tired of it and that wants to escape. This does make you question why exactly he has the paper. Henry always has the paper. It’s like a habit. The separate peace is love, as cheesy as it sounds. Peace is separate from the war. It is stolen from a time of unrest. But it’s taken selfishly, and he admits this on the train, and then he feels damned lonely and is glad when the train got to Stresa. Why feel lonely if you’re heading towards love? Well, you cannot underestimate the affect that being a Tenente has on you. Henry was a good Tenente and he took the war seriously. It took him thus very long to give up on the war; he shoots his deserters for Christ’s sake, and he’s not even Italian! Henry always has the paper, he cares about the war; he has pride and honor. Then he himself deserts and he has to admit that the war has cheated him, which is sound, but still difficult, after being such a soldier. There is a good to war: comrades. Rinaldi was good to him, as well as Piani and the priest and many others. He had the Italians, and now he has no one but Catherine. He deserted. Of course he has others, but at this moment, after the aviators and giving up on the war, this may be how he feels, and on a train, when you admit these things and feel these things, there is nothing to feel or think but these, nowhere to turn but to the window, and nothing to do but to think and feel. So he is glad when he reaches Stresa, not only because Catherine is there, but also because he escapes the train and these thoughts. Sanity often comes over truth, after all, in war, especially. A Separate Peace, what a nice phrase, huh. This is breaking. He loses his war and goes into a deepness foreign to him. Catherine mends him though, but losing Catherine makes him break where he ought to have been stronger. He falls into his emotions, which he had kept at bay for the length of the book. It is Catherine that ultimately gets killed though. She was too good to be broken with anything less.
There is a great quote for this breaking though, but this blog is now 4955 words, and now more, so I think I will leave that to your interpretation below. Let me just say that it serves as a basic summary for A Separate Peace. By the way, I think you all should read both the books back to back and then read them again. You have to reread a book to really appreciate it, and these two deserve to be appreciated. So I said I’d talk about Catherine, Rinaldi, the priest, writing style, and monologues huh. Well, I think a lot of that has been covered, and Henry took enough words as it is. What can I say? The characters are the most important aspect of a book, or character in this case. I could write about this much for both Catherine and Rinaldi too. They are both great characters, Rinaldi especially. He is a sweet man, open and close and jokey, though he has moments when he darkens, becoming forced to dabble in the truths of war and tragedy. I’ll put in a quote for him. The syphilis thing is genius. Rinaldi drops out of the book around halfway through, but Henry thinks of him once in a while, mentioning Rinaldi and how he may have gotten syphilis. It’s one of those extreme subplots, one you never see in action, just thought of. It holds much power by influencing the main character so much, and in not knowing exactly what happens, it adds to the realism, I suppose, since you get to see how some characters might feel by being lost in the first person, just like the rest of us. Monologues, inner monologues, are terribly gripping in this book. I’ll include some. It’s terrible, really, how honestly saddening it is. People never act nor speak as honestly as they feel, and sometimes they think almost just as honestly, and Henry gets there eventually. It resembles how he thinks when he’s drunk in the beginning, but since those days, Henry experiences a lot of traumatic things, and he gets to admitting things then, and eventually, it’s terrible, really. But it’s lovely, how terrible it is, grand; hence the crying I mentioned in the beginning. Not so funny now, is it. I’d like to write as simply as Hemingway some day. You’d need a masterpiece of a plot to pull it off though.
Tangent: The thing to remember is that it’s a great war novel and a great love novel but all around, it’s just another guy’s life, Henry’s. I say these things, I know, about war, laws and truths, like I know all about it, but honestly, I’m a seventeen year old girl that’s pretty well-to-do, and I’ve never been remotely near a war, and I really know nothing real about it. I don’t and I admit that, and so I hope I could absolve myself of at least some of the hypocrisy in my writing this and other things. I guess it’s a bit awful when I say I love war novels, war poetry, war art, and war movies, but it’s true since I do. I suppose if I actually was on the war, I wouldn’t so much. But then I go off thinking that I’d finally able to understand this stuff, but that’s so cold now, so utilitarian. So I guess I’m not a hypocrite in the sense that I admit my ignorance, but I am an idiot in that this all intrigues me so much, and not as an anti-war message, but as art. The emotion, the psychological effects, and the irony and tragedy that results from war is why I read, watch, write. You know what, I just don’t understand, I know, but I also know that that’s no reason for me to ever love reading any less, or writing. I may not know anything of war, but I have known my fare share of sadness. As for love, I guess I know even less, but concerning books, love for them, that is, and writing, I know the world. Let’s just hope I’m alright at it.
“’There is nothing as bad as war. We in the auto-ambulance cannot even realize at all how bad it is. When people realize how bad it is they cannot do anything to stop it because they go crazy. There are some people who never realize. There are people who are afraid of their officers. It is with them that war is made. ‘
‘I know it is bad but we must finish it.’
‘It doesn’t finish. There is no finish to a war.’”
“’We won’t quarrel, baby. I love you too much. But don’t be a fool.’
‘No. I’ll be wise like you.’
‘Don’t be angry, baby. Laugh. Take a drink. I must go, really.’
‘You’re a good old boy.’
‘No you see. Underneath we are the same. We are war brothers.’”
“He goes to the American hospital, I tell you, Rinaldi said. To the beautiful nurses. Not the nurses with beards of the field hospital. Yes, yes, said the major, I know he goes to the American hospital. I don’t mind their beards, I said. If any man wants to raise a beard, let him. Why don’t you raise a beard, Signor Maggiore? It could not go in a gas-mask. Yes, it could. Anything can go in a gas-mask. I’ve vomited in a gas-mask. Don’t be so loud, baby, Rinaldi said.”
“’You’re not really afraid of the rain are you?’
‘Not when I’m with you.’
‘Why are you afraid of it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Don’t make me.’
‘Tell me.’
‘No.’
‘Tell me.’
‘All right. I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it.’
‘No.’
‘And sometimes I see you dead in it.’
‘That’s more likely.’
‘No it’s not, darling. Because I can keep you safe. I know I can. But nobody can help themselves.’
“’If anything comes between us we’re gone and then they have us.’
‘They die of course.’
‘But only once.’
‘I don’t know. Who said that?’
‘The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?’
‘Of course. Who said that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He was probably a coward,’ she said. ‘He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths id he’s intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.’
‘I don’t know. It’s hard to see inside the head of the brave.’”
“’I am the snake. I am the snake of reason.’
‘You’re getting It mixed. The apple was reason.’
‘No, it was the snake.’ He was more cheerful.
‘You are better when you don’t think so deeply,’ I said.
‘I love you, baby,’ he said. ‘You puncture me when I become a great Italian thinker. But I know many things I can’t say. I know more than you.’
‘Yes. You do.’
‘But you will have a better time. Even with remorse you will have a better time.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh yes. That is true. Already I am only happy when am working.’ He looked at the floor again.
‘You’ll get over that.’
‘No. I only like two other things; one is bad for my work and the other is over in half an hour or fifteen minutes. Sometimes less.’
‘Sometimes a good deal less.’
‘Perhaps I have improved, baby. You do not know. But there are only the two things and my work.’
‘You’ll get other things.’
‘No. e never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn. We never get anything new. We all start complete.’”
“’No, no,’ said Rinaldi. ‘You can’t do it. You can’t do it. I say you can’t do it. You’re dry and empty and there’s nothing else. There’s nothing else I tell you. Not a damned thing. I know, when I stop working.’”
“’Something may happen.’ I said. ‘But it will happen only to us. If they felt the way we do, it would be all right. But they have beaten us. They feel another way.’
‘Many of the soldiers have always felt this way. It is not because they were beaten.’
‘They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took then from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.’
He did not say anything. He was thinking.
‘Now I am depressed myself,’ I said. ‘That’s why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say things I have found out in my mind without thinking.’
‘I had hoped for something.’
‘Defeat?’
‘No. Something more.’
‘There isn’t anything more. Except victory. It may be worse.’
‘I hoped for a long time for victory.’
‘Me too.’
‘Now I don’t know.
‘It has to be one or the other.’
‘I don’t believe in victory anymore.’
‘I don’t. But I don’t believe in defeat. Though it may be better.’
‘What do you believe in?’
‘In sleep,’ I said. He stood up.”
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
“’What do you think of the war really?’ I asked.
‘I think it is stupid.’
‘Who will win it?’
‘Italy.’
‘Why?’
‘They are a young nation.’
‘Do younger nations always win wars.’
‘They are apt to for a time.’
‘Then what happen?’
‘They become older nations.’
‘You said you were not wise.’
‘Dear boy, that is not wisdom. That is cynicism.’”
“’I’m not brave anymore, darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me. I know it now.’
‘Everybody is that way.’
‘But it’s awful. They just jeep it up till they break you.’”
“Everything was gone inside of me. I did not think. I could not think. I knew she was going to die and I prayed that she would not. Don’t let her die. Oh, God, please don’t let her die. I’ll do anything for you if you won’t let her die. Please, please, please, dear God, don’t let her die. Dear God, don’t let her die. Please, please, please, please dear God, don’t let her die. God, please make her not die. I’ll do anything you say if you don’t let her die. You took the baby but don’t let her die – that was all right but don’t let her die. Please, please, dear God, don’t let her die.”
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