For Whom (doesn't) the Bell Toll?

Last night we finished talking about this book, which may have very well supplanted The Sun Also Rises as my favorite work in the Hemingway oeuvre:

It's his largest work, and considered the fact this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Papa's death, it's probably safe to say he will never write anything longer. (Probably.)

But length is beside the point.

(Probably.)

So to speak.

The point is that this novel, like so many of his others, is full of phalluses, would-be phalluses and has-been phalluses. I do not think it would be an overstatement to say Ernest's love of the phallus was earnest. Why else all the double entendre and saber rattling? From the "mounted" policeman hoisting his "baton" at the end of The Sun Also Rises to the virile hero of To Have and Have Not, whose cocksmanship is not the least bit diminished by his loss of an arm.

In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan is the stud in question, making love to rape trauma survivors by moonlight and blowing up bridges in the daytime. I do not know of another author who has so thoroughly and eloquently explored the utter incompatibility of love and warfare, and to me this is his lasting contribution to the field of literature. Unfortunately, my time is next to nonexistent this morning (and tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after...) so I will have to limit my diatribe to two main points.

First, the first two-thirds of the novel has this simply unbelievable pacing. The reader, like Robert, is held in this stasis. The climax of the bridge is held nearby, but out of sight, and its presence permeates every sentence. Its promise of death and climax is both invisible and undeniable, which creates the sublime tension within, between, and amongst Robert and his peasant allies.

The reader, like Robert, wants to stay there, but the pull of the narrative (or for Robert, the call of duty) draws us unrelentingly forward. We know that the bridge means death, a metaphorical crossing over to the other side, but cannot help moving towards it any more than one can fight gravity. A good Lacanian might say it is the approach of the Real; a poor Lacanian (like myself) might call it the everpresence of the Divine – an incarnation of Kali in the form of girders, concrete and steel.

The second noticeable thing is how the novel constructs and conceptualizes courage. The innumerable references to cojones signal this as a specifically masculine trait, but theorizing how this occurs is actually one of the more nuanced aspects of the book. Pilar, for instance, is clearly courageous, but it is too facile to simply dismiss her as being a masculinized heroine. She retains her sexual agency throughout the novel, and in spite of her problematic relationship with her husband Pablo, it's difficult not to read her as one of the most courageous characters. Furthermore, the cave (where much of the narrative takes place) is clearly her domain. A rather obvious metaphor for the womb, Pilar maintains control over this space, so much so that Robert is forced to sleep outside in the snow.

As for Robert's foil, Pablo himself is ultimately shown to be courageous, returning to the safety of Pilar's cave/womb in the beginning of the novel's denouement. "I suppose if a man has something once, always something of it remains," she says. This observation is one of the novel's most important because it establishes that courage, in some way, is an essential characteristic. Even if lost, it will ultimately return, and this understanding is crucial to the final pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Without this information, it would be possible to conceive of Robert giving in to his suicidal ideation, but Robert maintains his resolve and faces his approaching death with courage:

"Robert Jordan lay behind the tree, holding onto himself very carefully and delicately to keep his hands steady. He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the pine needles of the forest."

Unlike doubting Arjuna, Robert has no Krishna to guide him.

Anyway, this is merely a thimbleful of what the novel means to me, and I can only imagine that subsequent readings (this was my first) will yield further insights. For the time being, though, it seems as if the daunting task of choosing a topic for my final seminar has been made... time will tell.