I want to say this, before I forget, while I’m on the subject of metaphor. The Bible consists of many different books, and genres of writing. The Torah, for example, which is the Jewish holy scripture, and which is sacred to Christians too (although Christians place it in what they call the Old Testament), sometimes requires a different mode of reading, or comprehension, than do the gospels and epistles that are found in the New Testament. All these writings express what a Christian would call truth. But they do so in different ways. Across different moments in time, as part of different heritages, and out of different necessities. Some in the form of song, some in figurative language, some as code of law, some as prophecy, and others as reportage. So that if a reader tries to comprehend all the books by way of a single rubric, or interpretive mode, instead of bringing to each book the mode that each one calls for (and that can be discovered within the writing itself, if one has patience, wisdom and guidance) then that reader will find obstacle after obstacle.
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I say “designed,” and I mean it, but if someone were to object to my use of that word, on the grounds that every aspect of the human creature is the result of evolution, which is less about design and more about survival, I would say, “Ok, sure.” Because, when I say “designed,” I do not mean, as some literalists might, that Adam was molded from clay, in one day, and plopped down in the grassy meadows of Paradise. That is a metaphor, and it is true as a metaphor. To believe that we are made in the image of God does not necessitate the exiling of reason.
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The intellect is designed for the former, not the latter. The latter is the work of the ‘heart’, though maybe I should use the word will.
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Certainly the intellect is designed for all sorts of processes, both simple and complex. However, there is a difference between, say, understanding a virtue (grasping it as a concept), which is one such process of intellect, and enacting that virtue, or allowing that virtue to inhabit you.
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And of course, when I say “the heart,” I don’t mean the actual heart. I feel like that’s a funny thing to admit.
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I do not mean there is a problem inherent to the intellect, as an apparatus of the mind. I mean that, like all aspects of the human creature, it functions best when allowed to operate within a range of limits, according to its design.
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The problem with the intellect is that it forgets, and is susceptible to pride. To be aware of something with one’s heart is to have absorbed that thing, so there is no forgetting. And so pride has more difficulty getting at it, and undermining it.
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What happened to Job, from the Bible, could happen to any of us. And knowing this with one’s heart, as opposed to with one’s intellect, is what humility is.
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The reason this is so is because dignity is the outward expression of an inward awareness. It is not the result of the mechanisms of thought.
I can best express such awareness through the following saying: “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
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You don’t need intelligence to be capable of this. But you must have humility.
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But that’s not exactly right either, because I don’t believe that one soul can be greater than another. What I mean, I think, is that some people allow their souls to manifest more powerfully or more deliberately than do others. It is they who have dignity, and they who are courageous.
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What I see in Hemingway’s work is that dignity appears in characters who have great souls. It is not the same as courage, but is the sign that someone can be courageous.
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And again, in The Old Man and the Sea, it is dignity that makes Santiago heroic. That he loses the marlin to the sharks, and that no one witnesses his struggle, only serves to reveal that quality in him.
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In the story Hills Like White Elephants, it is the girl who maintains her dignity, not the man.
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What I should say is not that his death doesn’t matter, but that it isn’t tragic. It would’ve been tragic if it had occurred before he’d had a chance to redeem himself.
Maybe it is tragic anyway, I don’t know.
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The reason his story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber is titled that way is because the main character, Macomber, wins back his dignity. That is why it is a happy story. It doesn’t matter that he dies.
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One of the things that is forgotten about Hemingway is that he isn’t without compassion. He is not interested in strength, but in dignity.
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The context of the quote is this: Hemingway has imagined, as a means by which to describe the bullfight to the reader, an old lady who is unfamiliar with its ceremonies, rituals and tactics. He makes this statement to her, during one of their imagined conversations, after she has remarked on what she finds “sad” about the fate of some of the bulls.
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That quote is from Death in the Afternoon, a non-fiction book that is mostly about the tradition of Spanish bullfighting, though it also contains thoughts about art and human nature.
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And yet do I really believe that? And did Hemingway himself really believe that? There is something absent from that quote, something in it that belies a fuller truth, which is that death is never the end. Or that it is only a visible end, a temporary end.