"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. A broken heart is simply a heart that has become stronger. It's a heart that is more self-sufficient, more open to the truth, and more capable of lasting love" -Ernest Hemingway
For all his bravado, Hemingway was a deeply insecure individual. Unable to come to terms with his father's suicide and manifesting a pathological antipathy towards his own mother, whom he referred to as a "bitch", his life was a series of almost comically macho adventures in big game hunting coupled with a restlessness and ambivalence where women were concerned. Married four times, he stands in stark contrast to...
ReplyDeleteBeethoven. Surely the archetype of the Romantic hero, the great composer's love life is marked by a series of unrealizable infatuations and obsessions. The piano sonatas are like a series of love letters to ladies of Vienna, a veritable feast of billets doux. Beethoven's progressive deafness - surely one of the crueler twists of fate - mirrors his increasing isolation. And yet, through all of this, he gives us light from darkness, major out of minor, transcendence from the commonplace. As cliched as it may now be, the Ninth stands as a testament to his belief in the inherent goodness of humanity. In contrast, Hemingway, with his nihilistic restlessness and his need to assert dominion over the animal kingdom, shows an inability to transcend the "broken heart" moments of his own life.
All of which is to say (with apologies to D. H. Lawrence): "Trust the art, not the artist."
Dear Will,
ReplyDeleteyou are quiet right. I had no idea that Hemingway was a mysoginistic individual unable to let go of the past. I do know the story behind Beethoven and its truly heartbreaking. Did you know that during one of his last performances they secretly hired a second director to lead the orchestra while playing his music. The director was out of eye sight of poor Beethoven who never found out :( I have always felt the worst for kind and defenseless people to whom life deals a cruel blow. Its so unfair :(