Modernism as a basis of E. Hemingway’s short stories individual style

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MODERNISM AS A BASIS OF E. HEMINGWAY'S SHORT STORIES INDIVIDUAL STYLE

Holter I.M.

Dniprovsk State Technical University

The tasks of our research are to find out the stylistic peculiarities of short stories by Hemingway in the context of the modernistic literary development and to reveal the stylistic suggestibility of the short story cycle “In our time”.

In the process of analysis we came to the conclusion that Hemingway's literary style is very simple, but, at the same time, this prose is highly sophisticated and its impact on the reader is powerful. Hemingway's style of writing displays, to the ultimate degree, the horror and emptiness. Such a high frequency of short sentences reveals a matter-of-fact atmosphere without any personal emotional exaggeration, because subordination expresses the author's complex thoughts and feelings. What's more, a pile of short sentences placed continuously suggests that everything happens in a short time, loading more mental pressure on the readers. Moreover, he employed the plain and simple words. For example, he used very few adjectives in this prose. Hemingway carefully chose every word in the vignette. In each sentence, he seemed to tell us tonelessly who did what, where and when. However, through his simplicity, we can decode a sense of moral value and clarity of heart as well. The theme that contemporary life is characterized by violent death is presented to the readers plainly. Hemingway's style can be described as masculine. The use of short, simple, powerful statements in his writing leave the reader with a sense of brute strength that can be associated with the brute strength of a man.

Taking everything into account, we have come to conclusion that Hemingway's words are essentially just words like any other words, but the way he stirs them together is his own unique formula, a stylistic recipe that no other writer has been able to recreate. There are sentences that only Hemingway could get away with because we know that Hemingway wrote them. Hemingway is truly alive in his words because his words are truly his. His style is uniquely his. This is what makes him a writer in the truest sense.

Key words: individual style, stylistic peculiarities, modernistic literary development, plain, narrative.

Гольтер І.М. МОДЕРНІСТСЬКА ТЕХНІКА ЯК ОСНОВА ІДЕОСТИЛЮ КОРОТКИХ ОПОВІДАНЬ Е. ХЕМІНГУЕЯ

Завданнями нашого дослідження є з'ясування стилістичних особливостей новел Е. Хемінгуея в контексті модерністського літературного розвитку та виявлення стилістичної своєрідності циклу новел «Унаш час».

У процесі аналізу ми дійшли висновку, що літературний стиль Хемінгуея дуже простий, але водночас його мала проза є надзвичайно витонченою і її вплив на читача є значним. Стиль написання Хемінгуея повною мірою презентує жах і порожнечу. Досить висока частота вживання коротких речень розкриває атмосферу напруженості і страху. Крім того, вживання коротких речень свідчить про те, що все відбувається за короткий час, піддаючи читачів великому психологічному тиску. Мова автора дуже стисла й проста, це своєрідний «мінімалізм». Привертає увагу та стильова особливість, що у своїх оповіданнях Хемінгуей використав дуже мало прикметників.

Оповіданням Хемінгуея властива фрагментарність сприйняття світу. Письменник дуже ретельно добирав кожне слово у своїй оповіді. У кожному реченні він ніби без жодної причини розповідав, хто що, де і коли робив. Однак саме завдяки цій його простоті читач може відчути і зрозуміти моральні цінності автора та неспокій його серця, а отже, не залишитися байдужим. Тема того, що сучасне йому життя характеризується насильницькою смертю, читачам представлена дуже чітко.

Стиль Хемінгуея можна описати як «чоловічий». Використання коротких, простих, змістовних і чітких тверджень залишає в читача відчуття брутальності, яке може бути пов'язане із грубою силою людини.

Враховуючи все, ми дійшли висновку, що слова Хемінгуея - це, по суті, просто слова, які нічим не відрізняються від інших і широко вживаються, але те, як він поєднує їх, - це його власна унікальна формула, стилістичний рецепт, який жоден інший письменник не зміг відтворити. Хемінгуей по-справжньому живе у своїх словах, оскільки вони належать само йому. Його стиль - це, безсумнівно, його авторський індивідуальний стиль. Це саме те, що робить його письменником світового рівня.

Ключові слова: індивідуальний стиль, стилістичні особливості, літературний розвиток, сюжет, оповідь.

Formulation of the problem

Ernest Hemingway is a writer who is different from others. He created his own unique and original style that has become his “calling card”. Hemingway's works have been attracting the attention of more and more Ukrainian linguists as well as foreign ones because the influence of his writings on the literature of the USA is considerable [11; 14]. The current relevance of our work is explained by the fact that some issues of Hemingway's literary manner have not been studied thoroughly. In particular, the problem of literary influences on the author's style noticed in his early works. Poetics of Hemingway's stories, which occupy a significant place in the writer's work and in the mainstream of the development of the American literature of the 20th century, as well as the general tasks of studying modernist narratives, need more detailed study.

Analysis of recent researches and publications

Hemingway's works are constantly in the focus of literary criticism. Among the studies should be noted the numerous works by I. Kashkin, that have gained worldwide importance. Stories and novels by Hemingway or their individual aspects were also analyzed in the articles by C. Baker, I. Finkelstein, K. Dupuis, S. Donaldson, L. Wagner-Martin, T Denisova, O. Lidsky, B. Gribanov, T Denisova, B. Baker, N. Telegin and many others. As O. Lidsky emphasizes, Hemingway occupies one of the most prominent places among the most brilliant writers of his epoque [6, p. 29].

Not breaking with the realistic tradition, Hemingway created an innovative style that perfectly met the task set before the artist. Getting short and expressive, from the very beginning of his career writer formed a technique he called the “iceberg principle”. B. Gribanov wrote about this technique: “If a writer knows well what he writes, he may miss a lot of what he knows and if he writes truthfully, the reader will feel all missed so much as if the writer had said so. The tip of the iceberg is that it is only visible one eighth above the water's surface” [1, p. 58].

Of particular importance are the studies devoted to analysis of the style of Hemingway's works. Thus, in her work “Transformation of the American Novel in the 1920s”, Natalia Telegina states that Ernest Hemingway's innovative search led to the creation of a novel in which the author's tendency was completely translated into a subtext that was widely used for keywords, phrases, details, and the storyline was weakened, opening up new possibilities for psychological analysis [7, p. 2].

Connection of Hemingway's stile with modernism was also stressed by other well-known literary critic O. Zverev in his book “Modernism in the US Literature”. He emphasized that Hemingway was by no means a “pure modernist experimenter” and his main point was to show an individuality, who lives in a real cruel world. That is why he portrays most of his characters on the backdrop of grand historical events [4, p. 127].

American researcher K. Baker notes in “Ernest Hemingway: The Life Story” that Hemingway's style has “masculine style” features. Using of simple, short and convincing sentences gives the reader a sense of tough male power. Many of the topics presented in Hemingway's works are exclusively “masculine”. The general notion that “a man should not complain when he is in a difficult situation but must accept his defeat with dignity” is repeated in Hemingway's stories [9, p. 78].

Kashkin sees in Hemingway's works the features of the literature of modernism, in particular, the literature of the “stream of consciousness”. He writes that the influence of Joyce, which was expressed in the use of an internal monologue, a fragmentary composition of Hemingway's works, in particular the collection “In our time”, was more stable. But sometimes the “stream of consciousness” - all over repetitions and grasps - grows into an annoying narrative [5].

V. Tolmachev finds common stylistic features with Verlaine. Like Verlaine, Hemingway's style is “sparse, rarefied”. To some extent, this is achieved by the fact that Hemingway's characters seem to have no soul. Their consciousness is represented in a decorative way, dissolving in the “patterns” of the outside world. Stringing the facts obeys a rather rigid logic, which indicates the limited pleasure. This shows the monotonous naturalization of Hemingway's inner world, its tragic nature [3].

American scientist Kelley Dupuis, in the work “Hemingway and Turgenev”, writes that Russian writers Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Chekhov had the greatest influence Hemingway's work [12].

So, it is necessary to mention that there are a lot of works dedicated to the examination of Hemingway's style and its peculiarities. Different linguists studied this problem in different years and in his own time, Hemingway affected writers within his modernist literary circle. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of stylistic peculiarities of his prose has not been examined with the reference to the detailed analysis of his stories. Thus we see that the style of Hemingway's short stories is not fully studied and many of its features were left out of sight of literary scholars.

Task setting. The subject of our research is individuality of Hemingway's literary manner and stylistic peculiarities of his short stories on the factual material of the collection of stories “In our time”. The purpose of our research is the examination and analysis of Hemingway's short stories literary manner from the point of view of modernism, stylistics of minimalism and suggestibility.

The tasks of our research are: to find out the stylistic peculiarities of short stories by Hemingway in the context of the modernism literary stylistic searching; to define the problem of stylistic and linguistic compression in the works by modern scholars; to reveal the stylistic suggestibility of the collection of stories “In our time”; to hand over the peculiarities of Hemingway's style on the basis of linguistic-stylistic analysis of the collected stories “In our time”.

Presentation of the main material. Hemingway's American literary debut came with the publication of the short story cycle “In Our Time”. This work is the bright example of his minimalist style. “In Our Time” was written in the “Age of Classical Modernism” (1915-1930). At that time the image of the world got the metaphysical versatility. The globality of the social space, where great history changes has happened, also changed the problem of the social specification of accomplished events. The main motto of modernism, as well as one of the main motives of Hemingway's stories is “everything that happens, happens to everybody”.

The individual Hemingway's style, despite its inherent rigidity, truthfulness and realism, is inextricably linked with modernism [2], in which, according to J.Dettmar, the main line of the development of modern literature to constantly reduce the social status of the hero finds its continuation; the modernist hero is “everyman” each and every person. The author ceases to be a bearer of absolute truth and begins to demonstrate its relativity. As a result, the integrity of the world of the work collapses: the linear narrative is replaced by a fragmentary one, fragmented into small episodes and served through several heroes who even have an opposite view of the events and facts [10].

Conventionality becomes reality, and, on the contrary, reality loses its social-temporal specificity, becomes fantastic and illusory. Time ceases to be historical, it becomes psychological. It appears as a closed loop.

The feeling of prolonged action together with the absence of the action itself arises. It means that time goes on without moving. The feeling of the closed space, lack of development of the situation and the characters themselves, the repetition of the actions appears.

The fragmented perception of the world in the text of a work of art is often expressed by the depiction of parallel and cross movements of several rows of characters' thoughts. It determines a kind of artistic “storyboard” of the picture of the world. The basic principle of filmmaking is the principle of installation. Editing is a way of cinematic thinking. It is through editing that the frames are connected, i.e fragments of reality, alternating plans of the image, selecting important details, spatial angles and more. The editing serves to reveal specific artistic content [8, p. 2].

“In Our Time” is labeled as a collection of short stories or a composite novel. The theme of the stories is reflection the nature of the world. The most important character in “In Our Time” is Nick Adams, who is the protagonist of seven stories. We first see him as a little boy in “Indian Camp” and we see him last as a grown but still young man in “Big Two-Hearted River”, the story that ends the volume. The seven stories that deal with Nick Adams provide enough information for us to trace his psychological development from early boyhood to young manhood: “Nick's life is full of shocking events that bring him face to face with violent death, also disappointments and frustrations having to do with love deeply affect him.

What is more, Hemingway was to create an atmosphere of horror - the Germans' slaughter was inhuman to a degree unsurpassed by anything - and to pave the way for the mental distortion of Nick Adams, who is the central character in these works.

In the process of analysis we came to the conclusion that Hemingway's literary style is very simple, but, at the same time, this prose is highly sophisticated and its impact on the reader is powerful. Hemingway's style of writing displays, to the ultimate degree, the horror and emptiness.

Such a high frequency of short sentences reveals a matter-of-fact atmosphere without any personal emotional exaggeration, because subordination expresses the author's complex thoughts and feelings. What's more, a pile of short sentences placed continuously suggests that everything happens in a short time, loading more mental pressure on the readers. Moreover, he employed the plain and simple words. For example, he used very few adjectives in this prose.

Hemingway carefully chose every word in the stories. He seemed to tell us tonelessly who did what, where and when in each sentence.

However, through his simplicity, we can decode a sense of moral value and clarity of heart as well. The theme that contemporary life is characterized by violent death is presented to the readers plainly.

Hemingway's style of the short stories can be described as masculine. The use of short, simple, powerful statements in his writing leave the reader with a sense of brute strength that can be associated with the brute strength of a man.

Many of the themes presented in the works of Hemingway can be described as male-oriented and extremely masculine. The concept that a real man does not whine or complain when put into a position of pain, but takes his downfall with a sense of grace and dignity is a recurring theme seen throughout Hemingway's stories. Baker expressed the idea that because the hero lives by his code, he is able to “live properly in the world of violence, disorder, and misery in which he inhabits”. The young waiter who hopes to one-day become a noble bullfighter in “The Capital of the World” illustrates this point. After performing gallantly, he takes his defeat with a sense of pride and chivalry allowing him to die the only real death in Hemingway's mind, the death of a real man.

Hemingway's stories are characterized with a fragmented perception of the world. For example, in the stories “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, “The End of Something”, “Cat in the rain”, the fragmentation is represented by the parallel and cross movement of several rows of characters' thoughts.

In the first story two waiters (old and young) embody different views of life. As the old waiter comes to conclusion “We are two of different kinds”. So, for the young waiter the meaning of life is work and wife; he cares only about his family and does not mind other people's troubles. The old waiter is less fixated on his personality and less self-confident. He wants to help other people who have lost hope in life. The only thing he has to offer them is a clean, well-lit place that shelters from a dark, meaningless world. The thoughts of two different characters are constantly intertwined, they express their vision of the world, attitude to a certain situation, but none is inferior, so the question remains open and each reader must interpret and understand it in their own way.

The principle of fragmentation is the basis of the story “The End of Something”. The author draws a parallel between the decline of the prosperous city of Horton Bay and the end of Nick and Marjorie's relationship, between past and present.

These two events foreshadow a transition to a new lifestyle. At the beginning of the twentieth century the enterprises that existed on the basis of mills were liquidated. People had to find other ways to survive. Therefore, the closing mill takes Nick and Horton Bay to a new life. As a result of these events, Nick's consciousness changes, as well as his views and preferences. For example, Nick would have married Marjorie before, but now he breaks up with her and just wants to live on.

This story shows us another parallel - it is the course of thought of a man and a woman, which manifests in the relationship to each other and causes a break in the relationship.

At the beginning of the story, Nick appears to be a stronger man than Marjorie, because it is he who breaks the relationship. While fishing, Nick seems a skilled connoisseur, and Marjorie is weaker: “She loved to fish. She loved to fish with Nick”. But then this is refuted by the author, when Nick realizes that Marjorie knows and can no less than he himself: “You know everything. I've taught you everything”. That is what Nick is oppressed by. He can't put up with the fact that a woman can be not only worse, but better.

Even after Nick abandons her, she tries to talk to him, somehow save their relationship, and when she realizes that everything is in vain, she takes the boat and leaves it.

As for the role of the author, he presents the facts, but does not express his opinion. He does not say that the end of old life is good or bad. It is up to the reader to decide what is right and what is not.

But with the help of repetitions he tries to focus the reader's attention, to place the accents. In this story, the main point is the end of the relationship between Nick and Marjorie, so in the dialogue above the phrase is repeated several times: “It is fun any more”.

With all his parsimony for comparison and metaphor, Hemingway does not skimp on epithets, which is especially evident in the “natural” narrative of “The Big Two-Hearted River”. Most epithets refer to water. Water is a source of poetic inspiration and life for Hemingway. It flows, overflows, there are a lot of fish in it: trout and perch. Besides, the river itself is like a living person. That is why the author uses so many epithets and comparisons: “The clear, brown water, colored from the pebbly bottom, deep, fast moving water, water was ice cold, moving stream, the water was smooth and dark”. It is noteworthy that Hemingway calls water differently: water, stream, river, swamp, shallow water etc..

The peculiarity of these stories is that the action is minimized, the number of heroes is limited, not much events are shown, but the psychological state of the heroes. The psychological state of the heroes, as a rule, does not change, only injected [7, c. 9].

Another characteristic of minimalism of the collection “In Our Time” is compression. Thus, Hemingway's style is unique, simple, concise and meaningful. This can be illustrated by linguistic- stylistic analyzing some of the stories of the collection “In Our Time”.

Already in one of Hemingway's first stories, “Indian Camp”, his favourite character, Nick Adams among the carefree nature is confronted immediately with the beginning and end of everything on the Earth. This artistic detail is a compositional negative technique (minimalistic literary device) by means of which the author depicts birth and death. At the phonetic level, minimalistic technique is manifested in application of abbreviated forms of verbs, for example:

“Nick didn't like it”.

“Ihaven't any anesthetic” .

“I'll have to operate on this lady”.

“I think it's pretty easy”.

Thrift in choosing of imagery and conciseness are characteristic of this narrative. This can be traced through vocabulary analysis, such as nouns, expressing the term in its most general form: thing, stuff, way.

There are few adjectives in the stories and they have no meaningful and expressive shades (long, young, Indian, old, upper, big, low, hot, left).

The stories are characterized by conversational ease and simplicity. The author uses grammatical minimalistic techniques. We often found this in dialogues: the cues there are mostly represented by elliptical sentences. For example:

- “Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?”

- “Not very many, Nick”

- “Do many women?”

- “Hardly ever”.

- “Don't they ever?”

- “Oh, yes. They do sometimes”.

The narrative strikes a constant confrontation between calm and movement, the struggle against the current and at the same time the calm. The whole story is filled with a description of various forms of movement - trout is moving in the water, in constant motion is the water.

A series of continuous continuous movements creates the impression of a film that symbolizes the psychological state of the hero.

We can see that almost all the movements Nick makes to the beat with nature. When the trout was motionless in the water and everything was still subsiding, Nick also lay quietly on his back and looked at the trees: “The trout was steady in the moving stream. Nick slipped off his pack and lay down in the shade. He lay on his back and looked up into the pine trees... There was a wind high up in the branches. Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire, when the night wind blew on it. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Ahead the river narrowed and went into a swamp”.

And when the trout stirred, Nick's heart also stopped: “Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved”.

What is more, Hemingway's short stories are highly suggestive. Particularly, the headlines have strong implications that indicate the author's message. For instance, such title as “The end of something” prepares the readers for some negative event or ending of something. Then, in the first sentence the author draws a parallel between the decline of a prosperous city and the ending of love between two people. After that the main idea of the story becomes quite clear. It is another distinctive feature of Hemingway's literary manner which is presented by the fragmentation of world perception that serves for disclosure of some concrete concepts.

But still, there are a lot of things that need to be considered carefully because the endings of all short stories by Hemingway are diverse and can be interpreted in different ways.

In addition, Hemingway is a master of dialogue. Through his brilliant use of repetition, he makes the reader remember what has been said.

A high frequency of short sentences presents a matter-of-fact atmosphere without any emotional exaggeration, because the subordination expresses the author's complex thoughts and feelings. Besides, a pile of short sentences placed continuously designates that everything happens in a short time, loading more mental pressure on the readers.

Hemingway carefully chose every word. In each sentence, he seemed to tell us neutrally and precisely who did what, where and when. That is why he employed plain and simple words. He used very few adjectives and nouns in his prose. For example, in the short story “Indian camp” Hemingway used nouns denoting only general meaning (thing, stuff, way) and adjectives that don't have any emotional colouring (long, young, Indian, old, upper, big, low, hot, left etc.)

Hemingway is a master of dialogue. It's not so much that he is recreating precisely how individuals speak, but through his brilliant use of repetition, he is able to make the reader remember what has been said. Hemingway's style of writing was probably most influenced by his early work as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star. There he was forced to adhere to a stylebook for young reporters, which included the following advice: “Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English, not forgetting to strive for smoothness. Be positive, not negative.”

Conclusions and perspectives

During the process of analysis we came to the conclusion that Hemingway's writing style is unique. Various techniques and stylistic devices which were spoken above contribute to Hemingway's distinctive “masculine” style.

Taking everything into account, we can state that Hemingway's style is very simple, but at the same time it is highly suggestive and its impact on the reader is powerful. The peculiarities of Hemingway's short stories are: a high frequency of short sentences presents a matter-of-fact atmosphere without any emotional exaggeration and a high frequency of short sentences presents a matter-of-fact atmosphere without any emotional exaggeration. Besides, the writer is a master of dialogue.

Hemingway's prose is short not only by its size, but also, it is characterized by compression which appears in the text in different modifications: omission of information; elliptical sentences; artistic details.

Thus, we have come to conclusion that Hemingway's words are essentially just words like any other words, but the way he stirs them together is his own unique formula, a stylistic recipe that no other writer has been able to recreate. There are sentences that only Hemingway could get away with because we know that Hemingway wrote them. Hemingway is truly alive in his words because his words are truly his. His style is uniquely his. This is what makes him a writer in the truest sense. Therefore, we see prospects in further studying the individual style and technique of the writer and comparing it with the works of other representatives of this literary direction.

stylistic hemingway literary time

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