Fiesta (novel)
Fiesta is the first major novel by Ernest Hemingway , published in 1926 under the English title The Sun Also Rises and made him famous. The novel goes back to Hemingway's experiences in the writing environment in Paris in the 1920s and in Pamplona in Spain in 1924. Hemingway then took part in the bull runs at the Fiesta San Fermin in Pamplona. Hemingway began work on the novel in Valencia at the end of July 1925, continued it in Madrid, San Sebastian and Hendaye in August and completed the first draft of the manuscript on September 6 in Paris. In the following winter he made extensive revisions and cuts in the Austrian Montafon Valley before sending the manuscript to Maxwell Perkins of Scribner-Verlag / New York in April 1926 .
Fiesta is still one of Hemingway's more important works today . In 1998 the novel was listed at number 45 by the Modern Library in the list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century .
action
The plot is based on the author's personal experiences. It leads to Paris, San Sebastián and mainly to Pamplona as well as to a region rich in fish in the countryside between Pamplona and the Pyrenees. The annual “Fiesta San Fermin” in Pamplona, on which Hemingway bases his novel, begins on July 6, 1924. The church festival lasts 7 days and 7 nights. During the procession the population, hung with garlic wreaths, supported by drummers, dances loudly through the city in northern Spain. Fighting bulls are driven through the alleys and streets from a launch site in the north of the city to the bullring, from which men - Spaniards and tourists - run away in an effort not to get injured. The fact that one of these men is killed by a bull seems to be drowned out in the general hustle and bustle.
The story begins with Part 1 of the novel in Paris and describes the life of American emigrants there, which mainly takes place in the cafés. The first-person narrator Jacob Barnes, known as Jake by his writing friends , works as a correspondent in the Paris office of an American magazine. After all, his credit at the beginning of the novel is $ 1,832.60. He's from Kansas City. On the Italian front during World War I, he suffered serious injuries that led to impotence. In the hospital he met the nurse Brett . Jake was in love with the young woman who was married twice and is now called Lady Ashley. (This "nurse experience" is also worked out in other novels by the author, mainly "In Another Country")
The Jew Robert Cohn from New York is writing his second book in Paris. The writing is not making good progress. He's got young Frances Clyne on his neck. Frances complains to Jake of her suffering: Robert has promised her marriage and has now withdrawn. Jake evades. He knows more, but doesn't tell Frances: Robert had an affair with Brett in San Sebastián.
Part 2 of the novel: Jake travels with Bill Gorton via Bayonne to Pamplona for the fiesta. The writer Bill came by steamer from New York to see the bullfights in Spain. Jake is known as an aficionado in Pamplona and therefore gets some of the sought-after rooms for himself and his friends at the Hotel Montoya. There aren't many Americans among the aficionados. That is why the Spaniards respect Jake so much that they even forgive his drinking friends. Tensions build up between the members of the group: Cohn knows his affair with Brett is well known and behaves in ways that Jake and Bill, and then Brett and Mike, don't like (Brett travels later than the other members of the group, with Michael Campbell, called Mike ). She wants to marry the Scotsman, who may one day get rich. Eventually, it turns out that Mike is a particularly alcohol-addicted bankrupt. But Brett himself is actually the central figure that everything revolves around.
Although Brett suffered a collapse on the way there due to alcohol , she enjoys the fiesta to the fullest. In the arena, she soon sits in front of the barrier and looks on unmoved as a bull slashes a horse's body with its horn. Robert finds these incidents in the arena rather nauseating, although he admires the bullfight, and especially the toreros, very much. But the main occupation of the friends is anyway in the daily drinking binge. In one of them, the drunken Mike complains about Robert Cohn, who is constantly raving about Brett and gets on her (and himself) nerves as a result: he asks Robert unequivocally to leave Pamplona. But Robert, who is always sober, cannot be turned away. Even after Mike's verbal attack, he stays close to Brett and is more than ever a source of quarrels.
34-year-old Brett adores the 15-year-old torero Pedro Romero and gets Jake to introduce him to her. She immediately starts a relationship with the 19-year-old. The hotel owner, Señor Montoya, disapproves when a torero drinks cognac and shows himself publicly with a scantily clad foreigner, not to mention the "conditions". Jake knows this, and although Montoya shares a friendship with him based on a shared passion for bullfighting, he ignores Montoya's apparent disapproval. Brett keeps complaining to Jake, her "darling", of the suffering she causes; she couldn't help it and wants Jake to confirm it. Jake is sympathetic to her, although it is clear that the problems that arise between the drinker Mike and Robert Cohn were caused by the fact that despite being engaged to Mike, she had an affair with Robert.
Robert Cohn, a talented amateur boxer when he was at university, can't get over the fact that Brett is staying in the hotel room of the torero Romero. He penetrates and beats the physically hopelessly inferior Romero, so that he is still handicapped in the later bullfight. Then he hits the drunken Jake too. Finally Robert fled - probably back to Paris to Frances Clyne. After Romero's Corrida , on which he shines as always despite the beatings mentioned, Brett and the young bullfighter look for the distance. The fiesta comes to an end.
Part 3: After the fiesta, Jake, Mike and Bill also leave Spain together. Their ways separate in southern France on the Atlantic coast. Jake returns to Spain, to San Sebastián. He wants to spend a few more quiet days alone there before he goes back to Paris. It works quite well until Brett telegraphs him to visit her in Madrid. As before, Jake doesn't think about it, but reacts immediately to the pleading request, takes the night train and meets Brett at the hotel. She has broken up with the possessive but immature torero Romero. Brett and Jake take a thoughtful taxi ride through the hot Spanish metropolis, get closer to each other again and as before, Brett regrets the fate that, in their opinion, led to this unfortunate situation: "'Oh, Jake," said Brett. 'We could have been so happy together.' [...] 'Yes' [...] 'Nice to imagine that, isn't it.' "
This passage shows how Jake seems to understand that a normal relationship with Brett would never be possible and she only turns to him every time she's feeling bad, accepting that she will hurt him again and again. At the same time, the author comes back to Jake's personal tragedy without explicitly addressing it.
The author about his work
Hemingway himself, in a letter to Francis Scott Fitzgerald, described his novel as "a damned sad story of how people perish". As the quotes preceding the book show, it is also about a time-critical consideration of the “ lost generation ” ( Gertrude Stein ), who became disaffected after the First World War, and the illustration of the preacher's words “the earth remains forever” (Solomon). The contrasts between a harmful (humid, stuffy atmosphere of the Parisian night world) and a healthy, earthy and nature-loving way of life (fishing in the Pyrenean mountain rivers) are shown, with sport and its audience in between. The main characters emphasize this: the Circe Lady Brett Ashley, who is so deeply immersed in the swamp of alcoholism and decadence that she fails to start a new life; the first-person narrator Jake Barnes is the typical Hemingway hero, controlled, indifferent even to mental and physical pain, who remains an uninvolved observer despite his share in the plot; the amateur boxer Robert Cohn, who comes from a wealthy family and is the only one who speaks of his feelings, but vacillates between insecurity and aggression; Pedro Romero, the male bullfighter, proud, persistent, courageous, brave, natural, strong-willed and full of dignity.
filming
In 1957 Fiesta was filmed under the title Between Madrid and Paris ( The Sun Also Rises ) by director Henry King , who had already brought a novel by Hemingway to the screen five years earlier with Snow on Kilimanjaro ( The Snows of Kilimanjaro ). The main roles were Tyrone Power , Ava Gardner , Mel Ferrer , Errol Flynn , Robert Evans and Juliette Gréco .
Web links
- 1957 The Sun Also Rises in the IMDb
- 1984 TV: The Sun Also Rises on IMDb
expenditure
- Ernest Hemingway: Fiesta . Authorized transfer from the American by Annemarie Horschitz-Horst . Rowohlt, Berlin 1928. 312 pages.
- Ernest Hemingway: Fiesta . Transfer from the American by Werner Schmitz . Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek 2015. 316 pages.