Final

Truth, Expectations and Art in between

My inhabitation of Paris over the past five months, infused by the study of walking literature and the genre of the Lost Generation, has been a tread between the lines of quotidian reality and surreal beauty. The parallels I drew between text and personal experience are numerous. The most striking is the confrontation of expectation and reality. The writers of the Lost Generation created an expectation of Paris for their readers. Within their penned worlds, they flirt with appearance and reality. On the other hand, walkers such as Thoreau seek truth through nature and equate beauty to nature while Sinclair challenges our visualization of truth by rearranging our perception of space. The walks set a pendulum to their exploration of truth, and many of them involve the walks mental and physical engagement with the external world. In the case of this essay, beauty is defined as the expectations that humans hold as the ideal. Art then becomes the mediator of truth and beauty. It manifests in the forms of literature, visual artworks, social etiquette and more. In this account, I will examine the attempts of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Henry James, Ian Sinclair and William Thoreau as well as myself to conflate truth and beauty.

THIRTEEN HEMINGWAY

Fin.

When the reading is completed, I turned to the first few pages of the book again. The dedication struck me: THIS BOOK IS FOR HADLEY AND FOR JOHN HADLEY NICANOR. I begin to wonder if the Hemingway’s non-fiction circumstances influenced the fictitious world he crafted in The Sun Also Rises. Published in 1926, a year prior to Hemingway’s remorseful divorce from Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, The Sun Also Rises approaches promiscuity bluntly with its heroine, Lady Brett Ashley. Helbig points out the confessional nature of the text which is inherent in a first-person narrative. This characteristic becomes more prominent towards the end of the novel, when we witness the most intense exchanges between Jake and the other characters, particularly Brett and Robert. Finally, the novel finishes with a sense of continuity that furthers its realistic quality as a Modernist work.

THIRTEEN WALKING

Introspect

Meditation. Perhaps something I will never know whether I have achieved in life. My mind is always busy, even in the most serene environment. I still have doubts whether I had meditated on my walk of meditation. 

TWELVE HEMINGWAY

All is fair in love and war

As we continue to explore the world of American Europe through Jake’s eyes, Hemingway introduces the intricacies of human relations in this microcosm of an expatriate community. In particular, we are brought to attention the competitive nature of male relationship. Furthermore, he dives deeper in the underlying influence of war in his veteran characters. 

TWELVE WALKING

Les Morts qui Marchent

Comme le mort, les temps sont sombres. C’est dimanche et tout le Paris est endormi. 

ELEVEN HEMINGWAY

Daybreak

In Book One of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway keeps to the first person narrative as we have encountered in this class earlier in A Moveable Feast. Such a style, together with the circumstances and the personality of Jake, cannot help but reminds us of the author himself. The perspective of Jake brings us into his American Paris and introduces the American expatriates within it. We are reacquainted with memory, the intricacies of human relationships, the status of women and the idea of a better land elsewhere (the very essence of expatriation in this context). In terms of craftsmanship, Hemingway balances the emotions of his story with a literary austerity that delivers a realism that we now consider a Hemingway signature. 

ELEVEN WALKING

Walk; Ponder

I think, therefore I am.

One never stops thinking. Even in a blank state of mind, there is still thought.