Jens Bjørneboe, "Hemingway og Brecht" (undated). "Ernest Hemingway and Bertolt Brecht" (Arbeiderbladet, 28 July 1964). Om Brecht (Oslo: Pax, 1977), 125-131. Samlede Essays: Teater (Oslo: Pax, 1996), 327-332. ©1977, 1996 by Pax Forlag A/S. Used by permission. English translation ©1999 by Esther Greenleaf Mürer.
I
For several decades modern realistic literature has been dominated by two names: Ernest Hemingway and Bertolt Brecht. They were born at almost the same time—Brecht in 1898 and Hemingway in 1899—and died not long apart—Brecht in 1956, Hemingway in 1961. Thus they were respectively 59 and 62 years old; both died at an age when one could still have expected new and great works from them.
A strange common trait was that, despite an almost classical realistic form of expression, they were avant-garde artists,—and that both had clarity and objectivity as an aesthetic ideal. The truly modern thing in their style is the markedly anti-sentimental, anti-emotional attitude. Both were politically leftist.
Each within his field—the novel for Hemingway and the drama for Brecht—exercised enormous influence on the writing of his time. Strangely enough, both on various occasions named the Bible as their most important literary model. Both helped to create the same stylistic sensibility out of an inborn aversion to, and distrust of, big words and expressions of pathos. It is not possible to imagine modern world literature without them.
In general the points of similarity are so strong and so numerous that it is astonishing that you don't see their names mentioned together more often.
Both began writing early, and had things published before they were twenty. Both were in the medical corps toward the end of the First World War. Both achieved world renown at thirty—Brecht with The Threepenny Opera and Hemingway with A Farewell to Arms and The Sun also Rises—in 1927-28.
It goes without saying that both were also active anti-fascists.
One could continue to find parallels almost indefinitely, but the differences were great as well.
The novelist, whose art was a quiet communication to the individual reader, was an adventurer and soldier; he had been in the line of fire in a number of wars, he loved ocean fishing and big-game hunting, boxing, fights, liquor and good food. The dramatist and director Brecht, the activist revolutionary communist, whose art lives primarily on the stage in physical action—was himself a purely intellectual desk-person, loth to adopt any but a sitting position. His dislike of physical movement was legendary; if he had a car handy, he wouldn't go a hundred yards on foot. Hemingway sought the most violent death he could find; he blew out his brains with a shotgun. Brecht died of thrombosis.Literary folk unfortunately seem to be occupied either with Brecht or with Hemingway. This is too bad, because the two of them belong together, and because the work of one can in many ways shed light on that of the other: Hemingway's theme was the individual in relation only to himself, Brecht's theme was the person in relation to society. It is remarkable how few there are who have dealt with both aspects of being human.
II
There is a certain class of writers distinguished by the fact that the times they lived in seem to a special degree to have taken up residence in them; contemporary history has become flesh and blood in their personalities, so that the problems and conflicts of their age ooze out of their work, as it were—whether voluntarily or no. The first part of our century has incorporated itself in the figures of Hemingway and Brecht perhaps more strongly than in any other writers living and working at the same time. Each in his way stands as a monument over the first fifty or sixty years of this strange century.
It began as a century with problems, and developed into an epoch where the "problems" gradually proved to be dilemmas—problems, that is, which can no longer be solved by any known or inherited means. In sixty years, or less, the very atmosphere of the time has been transformed from an insouciant optimism to a blank despair. We can illustrate it with a couple of well-known quotes from Bert Brecht: "A peaceful face is a sign of insensitivity" or "A conversation about trees is almost a crime".
This dreadful turnaround in the feeling about life occurred in the course of the 1920s and 1930s. Today it has broadened into practically the only attitude which can be taken with complete seriousness. To continue quoting from the same poem ("To those born after us"): "Those who laugh have simply not yet received the dreadful news."
Today the situation is such that practically all responsible people see the world like that, albeit there appear to be those walking among us who have not yet received "the dreadful news", even after the year 1945. In Hemingway and Brecht, knowledge of the "news" is obviously inborn, and forms the very point of departure for the work of both as writers; their common problem is thereby set from the first syllable: How can one manage to live in this world at all?
For others the question ripened later, but since the mid-century this despair has become symptomatic of humanity in general. It's a matter of living—at times in the word's most literal sense of surviving. Insofar as one assumes that it is good or desirable to go on living, that there is a kind of duty to live which replaces earlier generations' desire to live, the elementary problem of existence is itself transformed into a moral question. Even the word "moral" loses its original meaning of an ethical code, and acquires the almost military sense of morale. "The troops' morale is unshakable" means not that the soldiers and officers abstain from drinking liquor or lying with girls, but that they continue to hold out, that they don't give up the fight. To conquer the urge not to go on living becomes our first and most important moral commandment.
This one central theme became for both Hemingway and Brecht the problem they tried to solve—each in his own way, but with the same spirit and intent. Writing is primarily a moral problem for both, and for both the struggle for truth lies in finding a tenable basis for the commandment "Thou shalt go on living!"
The hand-me-down ecclesiastical and bourgeois moral code of negations—"thou shalt nots"—are replaced by a "thou shalt." The word moral today has an exclusively active meaning.
This means in practice that nearly all traditional middle-class morality is forced into a more or less museum existence, a kind of luxury for those who still have peace of soul, those who haven't yet received the dreadful news. In the same way traditional esthetics are likewise relegated to the museums; instead of the inherited duty to serve "the beautiful," it has become the artist's—and in particular the writer's—task to serve the true: his ethic and his esthetic both lie in the key phrase "intellectual honesty." We can survive only if we understand more of the world than before, and we can come to understand more of the world only to the degree we pursue the truth with precision and without compromise. It is our sole possibility, even if it begins by leading us into a steadily deeper despair and isolation. The illusions we have built on have shown themselves to be deadly.
The task must be to find something different and surer, something which in its truth-content is just as tenable in the moral sphere. It follows as a given that artistically and philosophically we are living in a time of iconoclasm, of idol-smashing and continual destruction of old values and moral norms—which to the "peaceful," those who have not yet received the dreadful news, must look like an age of pure and sheer destructiveness. The values which must be destroyed likewise include traditional esthetic norms—to the degree that they build on illusion in art.
An up-to-date art in our epoch both must and should be "destructive" in the sense that, both in form and thought-content, it is anti-illusionary. Its task on every plane is to destroy illusions—not for destruction's sake, but so as to find, if possible, what true and clear reality may lie behind an outer image: the truth which perhaps still lurks behind the illusion.
I recall Arne Næss saying in a conversation a few years ago: "We are forced to keep going over thin ice, with deep, black water under us." The utterance is characteristic for the only viable and hence the only worthwhile attitude in modern philosophy, but it is just as relevant for what is vital in modern art and literature.
It is in this sense of the word moral that the enormous influence which Brecht and Hemingway have had on the century's literature must be regarded as a healthy and stimulating inspiration.
It should be obvious that a lifelong wandering over thin ice, with full consciousness of the black water underneath, eventually comes to mark its man. The trek becomes not only strenuous, but also very bad for the nerves. We have—to the degree that we have awareness—full clarity over the fact that death is right under the soles of our feet. Our ignorance is boundless. We don't know who we are, we know nothing about the dark, we know that we live in a time which to an unheard-of degree has given human brutality and bestiality free rein, we don't know why, we know only that we are. Conventions, traditions and our penchant for overlooking the truth have been among the circumstances which have brought us to the brink of catastrophe. If we don't tear the veil aside ourselves, other forces will,—and will do so in an even more disagreeable manner. It begins to be urgent. It begins to be life-threatening to waste a minute. It begins to be a moral crime to sustain an illusion. Yes, it begins to be morally criminal just to let a traditional illusion stand without tearing it down.
For the artist the criminal state sets in the minute one fails to use one's tools and talents to strengthen our critical attitude of hostility to illusion. Today even the most refined and sublime l'art pour l'art means selling out to the entertainment industry. By God we don't need unwinding or relaxation: we need more then ever before in world history an awakening. But we also have more need than in earlier times of strength to tolerate what we see once we are awake.
For Brecht and Hemingway the awakening is no longer a problem: the real question is one of strengthening the troops' morale, of finding a valid and tenable basis for at least the tiny hint of optimism necessary to sustain life. Practically every word they wrote relates to this; the smiling Brecht and the deadly serious Hemingway are out on the same errand.
This page added November 29, 1999
