Hemingway is my favourite author
to read during summer. Whether
perhaps his books are often infused with exotic drinks, food, fishing and the beaches
or that many summers ago while I was just an adolescence with a delicate mind
and his books had stirred up something in my unsettling mind and quivered the immobile
fibres of my young heart. This
summer, after many years of being away from Queensland and now had decided to
settle back, I again picked up a familiar novel by the author …‘Fiesta’. While I am already well acquainted with
the plot and sceneries from my first reading, the emotion of the characters
this time, somehow, stirred a little harder, a little deeper and make my summer,
this time, a little bit more pleasant and sad.
In Fiesta, Hemingway provided
very intimate accounts of the café life in Paris where he worked, in Burguete
where he did his fishing and finally in Pamploma where the bull-fighting fiesta
took place. Amidst these accounts,
the relationships of Jake, Mike and Robert Cohn toward Brett, an attractive, nonchalant
and flamboyant woman are revealed.
Her character is famous for always getting what she wants. While it is well known that that
Hemingway’s sentences are shorts, his writing is simple with concise
descriptions, the complexity however, is suffused within the words, the emotion
of the characters and their actions.
And the poetry is hidden between the words, it requires from the readers
a certain understanding of beauty, grace and masculinity. His poetry is magical in that you can
actually see it in reality, it requires not an ounce of imagination …“Each time he let the bull pass so close that the man and the bull and the cape that filled and pivoted ahead of the bull were
all one sharply etched mass. It
was all so slow and so controlled.
It was as though he were rocking the bull to sleep”.
While Fiesta is unlikely to
please the faint hearted vegetarians and vegans, it requires from the readers a
difference sense of sensitivity, a sensitivity that respects traditions,
culture, humanity and a delicate understanding of masculinity. In this novel, Hemingway revealed his
religious character and carefully contrasted this to Brett, who has no
appreciation for religion. This
careful contrast was not made with calculation or contemptuousness. It was made with a simple difference in
their understanding of life. One
perpetually chases after her desires and immediate needs, the other lets the
currents of life rock and serenade and carry him away. Yet in Brett, there is something that
Hemingway felt is essential to life, hence Jake the protagonist could not help
loving her, whether it is her innocence, her desire to live, her oblivion to
happiness or her unwilling resignation to anything else but her individuality. While the presence of religion is their
obvious difference, the difference of their hearts and spirituality left
undiscussed.
At this time of the year
(December 2011), there has been much speculation about how 2012 will continue
to be difficult for everyone in term of employment cut and the perpetual
downfall of the economy. I wonder
if optimism is the key to get through it all or does it depend on your
perspective of life and how much effort one is investing into one’s life. However 2012 will turn out, however
difficult life might get, I do hope that we, in all of our adversities, remain
sensitive to traditions, cultures, humanity and each other gender/s;
ascriptions that so far have brought much poetry and kindled the eternal flame
of life. Though this may only be a
thought, but isn’t pretty to think so?
