Hemingway and Peele: Chapter I of A Farewell to Arms

Abstract

HEMINGWAY AND PEELE: CHAPTER I OF A FAREWELL TO ARMS Robert E. Fleming University of New Mexico Two recent critical studies of A Farewell to Arms have examined the connection between George Peele's poem "A Farewell to Arms" and the Ernest Hemingway novel. Pointing out that Hemingway chose his title rather late, during the period when he was revising his manuscript , Michael Reynolds states flatly that "neither the rejected titles nor the final title had any influence on the writing of the novel."1 Bernard Oldsey, on the other hand, implies that the poem might have been important in the final shaping of the novel: Hemingway had this title in mind during a vital period of revision, including the remarkable conclusion which corresponds directly with the title; and he obviously chose it with great care from among a number of possibilities that might have done well, but not as well, in providing a key to, and a reinforcement of, the dominant themes and motifs of the novel. . . . There can be little doubt, after a study of the other possibilities and the allusive sources they represent, that Hemingway produced the right titular key at the right time—for die poem and the novel fit each other in a number of corresponding ways.2 Oldsey goes on to touch upon the ironic contrast between the poem and the novel with respect to the "Platonic universals"—duty, faith, and love—emphasized by the sixteenth-century poet.3 But the relationship between Peele's poem and Hemingway's novel was more carefully established by Hemingway and is more important to the reading of the novel than either Reynolds or Oldsey acknowledges. Whether or not Hemingway significantly revised the text of the entire novel after he had settled on A Farewell to Arms as the title, he must surely have altered at least the opening of the novel, for the brief first chapter, just under 600 words, serves as both ironic commentary on and refutation of Peele's reverent and patriotic poem. Either Hemingway added a new first chapter that would more closely fit the poem or he went through the existing first chapter and pointed up some of the ironic contrasts between the poet's sixteenth-century attitudes and his own twentieth-century perceptions of the universe. The former theory would be possible only if Hemingway destroyed and rewrote the first five or six pages, but the latter theory is completely in keeping with revisions present in the holograph manuscript. Unfortunately, the holograph manuscript of A Farewell to Arms in the Hemingway collection at the Kennedy Library does not yield conclusive evidence of when particular revisions were made, though 96Notes the revisions themselves may be plainly seen. However, there is some evidence to suggest that at one point either the first chapter as published did not exist or that it was split off from what followed during the revision process. Chapter IV of the novel, which begins at the top of manuscript page 30, is labeled twice: as "Chapter IV," using Roman numerals as in the final published version of the novel, and—in the upper right corner—as "Chapter 3," in Arabic.4 Alterations to the first six pages make Chapter I a sort of impersonal prologue to the story of Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley and also establish a world view that methodically undercuts George Peele's views of religion and the monarchy. Peele's "Farewell" speaks not just for Sir Henry Lee, the Queen's Champion, whose retirement was the occasion for the poem, but for his time as well. When the knight perceives duty, faith, and love as eternal verities, when he honors his God and his Queen, he is accepting the most cherished ideals of the sixteenth century. Similarly, though in many ways Hemingway's Farewell is confessional, it too speaks in its opening lines not just for Frederic Henry but for his generation. One type of revision in Chapter I thus works toward the depersonalization of the observations made by the narrator: any pronouns that refer to the narrator are systematically changed from first person singular to first person plural. Accordingly, where Hemingway had written "I have...