For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition by Ernest Hemingway

Abstract

Reviewed by: For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition by Ernest Hemingway Stacey Guill For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition. By Ernest Hemingway. Foreword by Patrick Hemingway. Edited with an Introduction by Seán Hemingway. Scribner, 2019. 576 pp. Paperback $16.99. 16 July 2019 marked the publication date of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition. This new edition of the novel includes a foreword by Hemingway’s son Patrick Hemingway and an introduction by grandson Séan Hemingway, who also serves as the volume’s editor. This publication is the sixth in The Hemingway Library Edition series which began with A Moveable Feast (2009), followed by A Farewell to Arms (2012), The Sun Also Rises (2014), Green Hills of Africa (2015), and The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (2018). This new release of For Whom the Bell Tolls includes a trove of supplementary material pertinent to the novel. Appendix I features the text of Ernest Hemingway’s speech to the American Writers Congress at Carnegie Hall on 23 June 1937 before the premiere screening of the Joris Ivens/Ernest Hemingway propaganda film, The Spanish Earth. In the speech, which was later published in New Masses with the title “Fascism is a Lie,” Hemingway scathingly condemns fascism, exposes the murder of innocent civilians by Francisco Franco’s forces, and warns his audience: “The totalitarian fascist states believe in the totalitarian war” (FWBT-HLE 480). Appendix II presents a four-page untitled manuscript, written by Hemingway, circa 1938, (“Unpublished Account of the Spanish Civil War”). As in his speech to the American Writers Congress, Hemingway rails against the indiscriminate bombing of civilians by the fascists and includes gruesome first-hand accounts of bombing victims, along with accounts of his own personal near-death experiences while covering the war and during the filming of The Spanish Earth. Both of these texts enhance the reader’s appreciation of Hemingway’s deep devotion to the Spanish people and his support in their fight to retain their democratically elected government. Moreover, many of the themes in these texts echo similar themes in the novel. Tragically, despite Hemingway’s efforts and all those who championed the Loyalist cause, Franco and his fascist regime were victorious. In Appendix III, we have the opportunity to witness Hemingway’s genius in the wake of this defeat as he channels the Republic’s heartbreaking three-year struggle into a [End Page 106] magnificent work of fiction. In numerous examples of his early drafts, previously only accessible by visiting the Hemingway Collection housed at the JFK Library, we see Hemingway inventing and then meticulously revising lines, passages, and some very well-known scenes from the novel. In one of the manuscript passages, for example, we see the author struggling over a highly sexualized scene between Pilar and Maria that occurs in Chapter 12. It is a fascinating example and a reminder of the richness contained in these archives. The other interesting element of this edition is the inclusion of three rarely seen short stories by Hemingway written about his experiences in World War II. Those who attended the 2018 International Hemingway Conference in Paris will recognize “A Room on the Garden Side,” first published in Strand Magazine in 2018, which was included in our conference packet. “Indian Country and the White Army” and “The Monument” comprise the other two stories. In the Foreword, Patrick Hemingway compares these WWII stories to his father’s novel Across the River and Into the Trees and concludes that they “present a very different view of WWII . . . [and] are much more personal and closer to [Hemingway’s] own experience” (FWBT-HLE xii). For this very reason, however, I wonder if these stories would have served a better purpose in a future Hemingway Library Edition of Across the River and Into the Trees rather than this edition. In my opinion, there are perfectly excellent Spanish Civil War stories which could have been included instead. That being said, these three stories have a general resonance with the novel in that they are not just about WWII but about war in general. To that end, they share many...