Unless something spectacular happens in the last dozen chapters, I won’t be writing a full review of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Maybe it’s just me–or maybe it’s the slow pace that I’m taking through the book–but I think this has got to be the most boring book Hemingway has ever written.
I plug along, one chapter at a time, taking it like a dose of medicine before the dinner that is a book I actually enjoy.
The only redeeming value (thus far) has been the protagonist’s occasional conversations with the priest who serves alongside him on the Italian front of the Great war.
When I last wrote about a conversation between the two, it was the priest who had something useful to say. This time, the protagonist has a real point.
[The priest asked] “Then you think it will go on and on? Nothing will ever happen?”
“I don’t know. I only think the Austrians will not stop when they have won a victory. It is in defeat that we become Christian.”
“The Austrians are Christians–except for the Bosnians.”
“I don’t mean technically Christian. I mean like Our Lord.”
He said nothing.
“We are all gentler now because we are beaten. How would Our Lord have been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?”
Basically, the protagonist suggests that we only lay down our arms when we recognize that we’ve been beaten.
To hear Hemingway’s description, it appears that the Austrian/Italian front was largely static–the armies just pushed back and forth over the same bit of land in a tug-of-war that seemed to never end.
When the Italians were losing ground, they were humbled. They saw that their fighting was accomplishing nothing, so they were ready to lay down their arms. When the Austrians were losing ground, ostensibly they felt the same way. But it would only be when both were humbled, when both realized that fighting was getting them nowhere that both parties would be willing to lay down their arms.
But the protagonist does more than simply muse on the conditions under which surrender is possible. He makes a statement about Christianity and surrender–even Christianity and disarmament.
Equating imitation of Jesus Christ with Christianity, he states that only in defeat do we truly become imitators of Christ–because it’s only in defeat that we lay down our arms.
I find this idea fascinating in light of my current book club discussion of Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. We’re wrestling with this idea that nonresistance to evil is a Christian virtue–perhaps even, as Tolstoy and some other might suggest, THE Christian virtue (which, by the way, I happen to disagree with–I would say that THE Christian virtue is love. I am, however, wrestling through how nonresistance to evil makes up a component of that Christian virtue of love–but I digress.)
Is nonresistance to evil a primary means by which Christians are to imitate Christ? I’m still turning that topic over in my mind. But Hemingway’s little commentary has made me think a bit further.
Then there’s the protagonist’s final question. “How would Our Lord have been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?”
What if Jesus had let Peter “deliver” Him in the Garden of Gethsemane? What if He had urged the use of the sword against His enemies?
Jesus would have emerged triumphant on this earth, a military leader. He could have gotten out of there. He could have escaped death.
And he would have been utterly defeated.
Jesus’ victory was not to be found in wielding the sword. His victory was not found even in self-defense. His victory occurred when He surrendered–to God’s will and then, for God’s sake, to man’s.
He could have won an earthly victory in the Garden, but if He had; He’d have lost the eternal battle. And so Jesus, recognizing the eternal defeat earthly victory would have meant, surrendered to earthly defeat in order to gain the heavenly victory.
How often, I wonder, do I fight earthly battles under the illusion that somehow earthly victory means something eternally? Oh, that I could see with the eyes of eternity–and surrender the battles here that if fought and won would only engender true defeat.
