" For Whom the Bell Tolls " ( Eng. For Whom the Bell Tolls ) is a novel by Ernest Hemingway , released in 1940 . Entered the Publishers Weekly bestseller list for 1940 and 1941 in the United States .
| For whom the Bell Tolls (For whom the alarm sounds) | |
|---|---|
| For whom the bell tolls | |
| Genre | novel |
| Author | Ernest Hemingway |
| Original language | English |
| Date of first publication | 1940 |
| Publishing house | |
| Previous | |
Tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American fighter of the International Brigades , sent to the rear of the Franco , to the partisans, during the Spanish Civil War . As a demolition expert, he was entrusted with blowing up a bridge to prevent the Frankish reinforcements from approaching the attack on Segovia . Hemingway said that, describing Mary in the novel, he imagined Ingrid Bergman , who three years later played her in the film of the same name .
Content
Title
The title of the novel dates back to the preaching of the 17th century English poet and priest John Donne , an excerpt from which became the epigraph to the novel.
“There is no person who would be like an Island, in itself, each person is part of the Mainland, part of Sushi; and if the coastal cliff blows into the sea in a wave, Europe will become smaller, and also if it rinses off the edge of the cape or destroys your castle or your friend; the death of every Man belittles me too, for I am one with all of Humanity, and therefore do not ask who the bell tolls: it is ringing for You. ”
Original textNo man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee [1] .
Plot
Spain, May 1937. The first year of the civil war is ending. Arriving in the partisan detachment of Pablo, on the instructions of the command of the republican forces, internationalist American Robert Jordan meets Mary - a girl whose life is broken by the war. It is here that the main events unfold: a clash of Pablo's unwillingness to carry out a risky task and Jordan's sense of duty; and Jordan's debt with his newfound taste for life, caused by his love for Mary. A significant part of the novel is told through the thoughts and experiences of Robert Jordan, with memories of meetings with Russians in Madrid and about his father and grandfather. Pablo's wife - Pilar - talks about events that demonstrate the terrifying brutality of the civil war, in one case from the Republicans, in the other from the Francoists.
Characters
- Robert Jordan - Demoman Specialist
- Anselmo - an old man, a guide and a hunter , a member of the Pablo squad
- Pablo - the leader of the partisan detachment
- Rafael is a gypsy member of the Pablo squad
- Mary - Jordan's beloved, lives with the detachment of Pablo
- Pilar - wife of Pablo, gypsy
- Agustin - a member of the Pablo squad
- El Sordo (Deaf) - leader of a neighboring partisan detachment
- Fernando - a bored member of the Pablo squad, middle-aged
- Andres - member of the Pablo squad, brother of Eladio
- Eladio - member of the squad Pablo, brother of Andres
- Primitively - member of the Pablo squad
- Joaquin - a young man, a member of the squad El Sordo
- Karkov - Soviet agent and journalist (based on M.E. Koltsov )
Historical background
Hemingway argued that the events described in the novel completely represent the fruit of his fiction. Recently, however, allegations have been made that some of the plot has documentary grounds, in particular, the writer Leonid Parshin claimed that the prototype of Robert Jordan was the NKVD employee, Hero of the Soviet Union and Social Labor K. P. Orlovsky [2] .
Film adaptation
Based on the Hemingway novel in 1943, director Sam Wood directed the film of the same name with Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper in the lead roles. The film was nominated by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an award in nine categories: Best Picture, Best Actor (Gary Cooper), Best Actor (Ingrid Bergman), Best Actor in a Supporting Role ( Akim Tamiroff ), camera work, artist's work, installation, musical accompaniment. However, only the Greek actress Katina Paxino received the Oscar as "Best Supporting Actress" for the image of the ardent republican Pilar. The budget of the picture was 3 million dollars.
Edition in the USSR
The publication was opposed by the chairman of the Communist Party of Spain, Dolores Ibarruri , who considered that the author had too negatively portrayed the French anti-fascist Andre Marti .
Timofei Rokotov , editor of the journal International Literature , which was supposed to publish the novel, compiled a memorandum to Zhdanov in 1941, in which he quoted phrases and entire pages regarding Karkov, Dolores Ibarruri, the moral character of the Communists, etc. According to Rokotov, “... separate chapters in which the author depicts Soviet people who took part in the struggle of the Spanish people against rebels and interventionists are of considerable interest”, at the same time “there is a special chapter in the novel containing cool nical picture of Andre Marty, who launched the book under his real name as the chief commissioner of the International Brigades of the Spanish Republican Army. According to the characteristics of the people surrounding Marty, he is completely crazy, he has a mania to shoot people. ” The Office of Agitation and Propaganda agreed with Rokotov’s arguments. [3]
After the decree of the CPSU Central Committee “On Overcoming the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”, Mikhail Koltsov, who served as the prototype of Karkov, was posthumously rehabilitated, and Andre Marty, on the contrary, was branded as “an apostate from the ideals of communism”. Nevertheless, the publication of a Russian translation was banned until 1962, when the ideological department of the CPSU Central Committee unexpectedly demanded that the novel be translated into Russian. The book was published in 1962 by the Publishing House of Foreign Literature in small circulation and was distributed among people on the special list approved by the CPSU Central Committee, because, as stated in the preface, it “... contains a number of points that are difficult to agree with. For example, the not entirely correct interpretation of the images of the Communists, fearless and courageous fighters against fascism in difficult times for the Spanish people attracts attention ”. [3]
The novel was published in mass circulation as part of the four-volume edition of Hemingway, published by the Fiction Publishing House in 1968 [4] , but with significant - more than twenty of them - banknotes. [3]
Interesting Facts
- The novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" ranks eighth in the list of " 100 books of the century according to Le Monde ."
- The American group Metallica in the Ride the Lightning album has a song called " For Whom the Bell Tolls ", which describes one of the episodes of the novel - the death of El Sordo's squad.
- The author gave the name of the Soviet translator and literary critic Kashkin , one of the central characters of the novel, the Russian demolitionist Kashkin, whose work Hemingway greatly appreciated.
Notes
- ↑ "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1623)
- ↑ “Like Dumas” - “Lessons in Slow Reading” of history (3) - “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
- ↑ 1 2 3 Arlene Blum . International Literature: The Censored Past Foreign Literature, No. 10, 2005.
- ↑ Yu. V. Pankov Special literature Special archival copy of March 6, 2018 on Wayback Machine // About books. Bibliophile Journal , No. 2, 2011.
Literature
- Gilenson B. A. Roman E. Hemingway "For Whom the Bell Tolls." History and modernity. - Infra-M, 2016 .-- 196 p. - ISBN 978-5-16-012026-3 .