Functionality of the ladscape in the novel "Farewell to Arms" by E. Hemingway

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South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushynsky

Functionality of the ladscape in the novel “Farewell to Arms” by E. Hemingway

Stryga E.V.,

Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor

Varlan T.М.,

4-th year student of the Faculty of Philology

Summary

The article deals with the analysis of the description of nature and rain in E. Hemingway's anti-war novel “Farewell to Arms” and revealed its functional purpose. There have been depicted various types of landscape: static, which show a calm, balanced image of nature, and dynamic, which reveal the image of nature during the heating of elemental forces or the process of changing events. The image of the rain has been singled out, which became a leitmotif of the work.

Key words: arts, nature, landscape, leitmotif, “A Farewell to arms”, Ernest Hemingway.

Стрига Е.В., Варлан Т.М. Функціональне призначення пейзажу в романі «Прощавай, зброє» Е. Хемінгуея

У статті проаналізовано опис природи, дощу в антивоєнному романі Е. Хемінгуея «Прощавай, зброє» та виявлено їх функціональне призначення. Відображено різні типи пейзажу: статичні, які показують спокійне, врівноважене зображення природи, і динамічні, які розкривають зображення природи під час вирування стихійних сил або перебігу динамічних подій. Розглянуто образ дощу, який став ключовим для всього твору.

Ключові слова: творчість, природа, пейзаж, лейтмотив, «Прощавай, зброє», Ернест Хемінгуей.

nature rain hemingway

Стрига Э.В., Варлан Т.Н. Функциональное назначение пейзажа в романе «Прощай, оружие» Э. Хемингуэя

В статье проведен анализ описания природы, дождя в антивоенном романе Э. Хемингуэя «Прощай, оружие» и выявлено их функциональное назначение. Отображены разные типы пейзажа: статические, которые показывают спокойное, уравновешенное изображение природы, и динамические, которые раскрывают изображение природы во время бушевания стихийных сил или течения динамических событий. Рассмотрен образ дождя, который стал ключевым для всего романа.

Ключевые слова: творчество, природа, пейзаж, лейтмотив, «Прощай, оружие», Эрнест Хемингуэй.

Problem statement

A beautiful master of words, the greatest American writer of the 20th century, the Pulitzer Prize winner (1953) and Nobel Prize in literature (1954) this is a small list of Ernest Hemingway's achievements. Like a hundred years ago, so today interest in his work among readers and among researchers is not weakening.

E. Hemingway was born at the turn of two centuries - in 1899, and lived the life of his era. One of the tragic creations of the contrary, problematic history of the past century is world and civil wars. E. Hemingway was an active participant of most historical, world scale events, and he did not remain indifferent observer of bloody military clashes, but effectively acted on the side of truth and humanism. Participation in the war and military experience largely determined the whole worldview of E. Hemingway, the whole character of his work. In his early works of the 1920s, E. Hemingway acted as a representative of the “lost generation” - that generation of young people in America and Europe whose lives were seriously crippled by the imperialist war. War - a foreign war for other people's interests - took away their health, deprived them of their mental balance, and knocked them out of their habitual life track. They had traumas and nightmares, instead of the old ideals. This also sent Hemingway into the mainstream of the anti-war theme and humanism.

The analysis of recent publications

The best books of E. Hemingway were written in the years between the two world wars. The weapon was left for a while, but it did not become calmer and easier. In fact, the war did not stop.

For the first time the name of Ernest Hemingway began to appear in the criticism in the 1930s. Critical interest was contributed by his “military” works and related topics of the lost generation, which greatly enriched the idea of the artistic depiction of the First World War in literature.

One of the first who started to remind the name of Ernest Hemingway in her reviews was G.A. Elistratova. She wrote that without him the literary picture of modern America seemed to be incomplete. E. Hemingway was “undoubtedly an artist of great power and brilliance”, but he could not be measured with the usual standards of sociological criticism, because the writer “stood apart from public life”. E. Hemingway at that time was the only writer who demonstrated non-sociological literature of the United States [8].

In the study of E. Hemingway's art, a special place was taken by the works of I.O. Kashkin [5]. He gave a complete assessment of the novel, stressed its duality and made a number of comments on the artistic features [5]. I.O. Kashkin also identified three main strata: a clear and understandable story, lyrical prose with different motivation and a number of experimental samples, in which Ms. Stein were influenced. P.I. Geiber, who studied Soviet American studies in the 1930s, described the works of I.O. Kashkin perfectly: “Today, against the background of the huge number of studies about E. Hemingway, the works of I.O. Kashkin written in the 30s fully retained their significance. The point is that I.O. Kashkin was a critic of a special kind. Not only the most important interpreter, but also his active propagandist and populariser, he was a rare type of scholar-researcher and master-translator of E. Hemingway's art. Working with the writer's word allowed I.O. Kashkin to penetrate deeply into the steel style of the American author” [8].

According to the definition of many critics, E. Hemingway's style became innovative and perfectly corresponded to the goal that the history has set for the artist. Andre Maurois wrote about the style of E. Hemingway that his style was made of well-turned metal elements. Elegance was achieved by the fact that he did not strive to be elegant at all.

Since 1937, the study of E. Hemingway's creativity in Soviet criticism had been discontinued, and almost a twenty-year break came. But in the sixties the writer again became a cult figure and his fame grew beyond literary and critical research.

In addition to the above-mentioned researchers of E. Hemingway's creativity, the recognized critics are B.T. Gribanov, Ya.M. Zasursky, B.O. Gilenson, V.A. Kukharenko, I.L. Finkelshtein, A.I. Startsev, A.I. Petrushkin, M.A. Anastasiev, VD. Dneprov and others.

Thus, B.A. Gilenson noted that the first post-war decade is the most productive stage in the work of E. Hemingway. The Paris years gave him so much as an artist and a man. His basic aesthetic principles, the main problems crystallized: the man among the tragic trials that fell on his court; a man who seeks a counterbalance to the world in which he lives [2].

The researchers repeatedly turned to “AFarewell to Arms”. A.P. Platonov gave an interesting analysis of the love conflict in the novel [10]; J.M. Zasursky saw the ideological content of the work and compared the initial and concluding versions of the finale [6].Since the beginning of the first edition of E. Hemingway's book “A Farewell to Arms”, literary critics have done a great deal to understand it correctly, and in recent years the work has been carried out in the study of speech aspects. So, S.M. Andreichuk investigated the problem of the “untranslatable” unity of the phraseological units of the English language, their use in the novel in order to understand the functional significance of them in the novel's text [1]. O.S. Zemly- anuhina and T.V Larina studied the lexical field of the novel. They, like other critics, drew attention to a large number of dialogues in the author's works, but at the same time it amazed the one-folded- ness of this dialogue, its lexical simplicity. The heroes of E. Hemingway speak ordinary language. In their speech there is no poetic metaphorism. However, with such simplicity, right living thoughts are guessed, which remain in the subtext of the work. You can decrypt the implication if you understand the moral state of the hero, who allegedly hides it from the interlocutor [4]. The lyrical element is expressed not by the words, but by what is behind them, which is guessed with a number of indirect signs. Proceeding from this, the purpose of the article is to analyze the description of nature, the rain in E. Hemingway's anti-war novel “A Farewell to Arms” and the identification of their functional purpose.

Landscape in literature performs an important function. With the help of it, the author embodies his vision of the world. The description of nature is an expressive element of the artistic text, which allows the reader to plunge into the atmosphere of a story, novel or poetic work. Landscape plays an important role in the literature because it can carry not only the background, but also the semantic load. In the art work, depending on the author's intentions, the description of the landscape can indicate the place of action, create a certain atmosphere or reveal the character of the hero.

E. Hemingway uses different types of landscape: static, which shows a calm, balanced image of nature, and dynamic, which reveal the image of nature during the heating of elemental forces or the flow of dynamic events. In E. Hemingway's novel “A Farewell to Arms”, the greatest numbers of landscapes are static images of nature. In the depiction of static landscapes, the author gives high priority to descriptions of relief elements and material objects. To describe the elements of the dynamic landscapes of the novel, relief elements and natural phenomena are used. Static and dynamic landscape descriptions of the researched author perform illustrative functions that help the author talk about the time and place of the events depicted. “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. The troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves. The plain was rich with crops; there were many orchards of fruit trees and beyond the plain the mountains were brown and bare. There was fighting in the mountains and at night we could see the flashes from the artillery. In the dark it was like summer lightning, but the nights were cool and there was not the feeling of a storm coming” [10].

From the first lines of the novel, E. Hemingway depicts nature unremarkably establishing the attitude to the war, expresses the tragic nature of events that will become the determining doom for the heroes of the novel. The change of events in the novel passes unnoticed from summer to autumn, from dust to mud, from the sun to rain. So, the author of the book “A Farewell to Arms” shows that the change of the season coincides with the course of events at the front (victory comes at spring, defeat comes at autumn), and tragic events and moods are intensified by the rain. Rain assumes something ominous. It appears already in the first chapter - precisely in that connection, which will pass through the whole novel - in connection with death: “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army” [10]. At the background of the rain, there are a number of military episodes, and each time someone's death is combined with the rain. Aymolay under the rain “in the mud on the side of the embankment, his feet pointing downhill, breathing blood irregularly”. In the rain, the Italian gendarmerie shoots its people; convicted colonel “walked in the rain, an old man with his hat off...We stood in the rain and were taken out one at a time to be questioned and shot” [10]. The rain accompanies the love scenes and the rain motif sounds in the conversation of the heroes:

“Listen to it rain”.

“It's raining hard”.

“And you'll always love me, won't you?”

“Yes”.

“And the rain won't make any difference?”

“No”.

“That's good. Because I'm afraid of the rain”.

“Why?” I was sleepy. Outside the rain was falling steadily.

“I don't know, darling. I've always been afraid of the rain”.

“I like it”.

“I like to walk in it. But it's very hard on loving”.

The conversation about the rain lasts for a long time. In the end, Catherine admits: “All right. I'm afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it” [10].

This simple dialogue arouses anxiety and makes the reader expect an inevitable tragic denouement. The theme of rain became the theme of death, growing, it fills everything. The end of conversation does not ease tension: “It's all nonsense. It's only nonsense. I'm not afraid of the rain. I'm not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn't. She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining” [10]. This last multi-valued phrase portends the fateful inevitability that Catherine foresees.

A similar image of rain is used in his work “Three Comrades” E.M. Remarque. He fills it with a deep symbolic meaning; with the help of this image, the writer conveys the tints of the dominant mood of the characters. Pat fears that she will die in the rain: dampness is harmful to her sick lungs. “It is raining.”, - she repeated. “It has been raining for too long already, darling. At night sometimes when I wake, I imagine I'm quite buried under all the rain” [9]. The rain comes in September: it portends separation to lovers, a danger to Pat's health. Robert leaves the clinic of Professor Zha- fa, where he saw so much suffering, and it rains in the street [9]. In E.M. Remarque, nature lives independently of man through its secret life. “Night. Outside it began to rain. The drops fell softly and gently. They no longer pattered as they had done a month ago when they encountered only the bare branches of the lime trees - now they rustled lightly down among the young, yielding leaves; they pressed toward them and ran down them, a mystic festival and secret flowing down to the roots, whence they would mount again and themselves become leaves that would again await the coming of the rain in the nights of early spring” [9].

Both writers, E. Hemingway and E.M. Remarque, attach special importance to the image of rain. The word “rain” in the novel by E. Hemingway “A Farewell to Arms” helps to create the necessary tonality. T.L. Motyleva very accurately noticed that the image of rain is used to express a variety of shades of dominant mood [7]. The motive of rain, cold, persistently drumming on the roof or on bare earth, slowly penetrates the reader's soul and causes a sense of anxiety, anticipation of trouble. “Under the rain” the first part of the book ends, in the rain it happens a retreat under Caporetto. Catherine is afraid of the rain, she sees herself dead in the rain. The rain accompanies the farewell of the heroes on the return of Fred to the front, he accompanies their meetings after the hero's desertion from the army, and it rains during an escape to Switzerland. Only in idyllic Swiss episodes, the rain changes with pure, radiant snow to reappear in the final of the novel: Catherine dies in the rain, and the last sentence of the novel looks like this: “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” [10].

Undoubtedly, rain is used in the novel as a symbol, but a realistic symbol, which has a specific emotional purpose. Seeking to evoke a certain emotional reaction of the reader, E. Hemingway uses those tools that he considers to be the best, and uses them realistically. And this is especially well traced in the example of rain. “It was clear daylight now and a fine rain was falling. The wind was still blowing outside up the lake and we could see the tops of the white-caps going away from us and up the lake. I was sure we were in Switzerland now” [10]. Here the hero is not in a cosy room, but in a boat in a stormy lake, during a heavy escape, but the rain does not interfere, on the contrary, it even helps the hidden ferry.

The theme of the rain does not stop to sound, it amplifies, and the novel ends with the death of the heroine. So quite a real detail, “expanding” emotionally turns into a kind of tragic symbol not losing its real basis at the same time. T.L. Motyleva writes: “The image of rain as a monotonously sad melody accompanies the whole story - to the last page, where the main character of the novel Henry after Katherine's death, goes back to hotel in the rain” [7].

Conclusions

Ernest Hemingway is the American world-famous writer, journalist, winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel of E. Hemingway “A Farewell to Arms” reflects the global problems of the last century and is still considered to be the best work about the “lost generation”.

The analysis of the novel “A Farewell to Arms” showed that the description of nature in the work is diverse in its semantic content and serves as a background for creating plot events. Through the whole work, the rhythm of the season change coincides with the events on the front when victory comes at spring, the defeat occurs at fall. The article focuses on the study of the image of the rain, which became the leitmotif for the whole work.

The landscape sketches represent a wide range of emotions, sincere experiences of the main characters, and the leitmotif of the rain leads and makes the central theme of the novel sound so clear - the theme of hostility to life circumstances, and the fragility of human happiness.

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