The Poetics of Impersonality in A Farewell to Arms

Abstract

Had Wyndham Lewis given more attention to the literary composition of A Farewell to Arms, he might have discovered the real aesthetic problem behind Hemingway's narrative use of the first person singular. But Lewis was convinced that the problem, in its ultimate reach, was political: that Hemingway, in his unfortunate imitation of the literary mannerisms of Gertrude Stein, had lent credence to the 'proletarianization' (34) of the language of the novel which would debase Anglo-Saxon civilization and make it hostage to the levelling influence of Jews and other Central European immigrants. Of course, 'the personality of this First-person-singular, imposed on him largely by the Stein-manner' (29), also made Hemingway himself a hostage to 'a Weltanshauung [sic], which may not at all be his, and does in fact seem to contradict his major personal quality. This infantile, dull-witted, dreamy stutter compels whoever uses it to conform to the infantile, dull-witted type. He passes over into the category of those to whom things are done, from that of those who execute'(27).