Re: hemingway

Capra Daniele 6527EP (6527ep@student.gelso.unitn.it)
Tue, 08 Jun 1999 14:30:58 +0200 (DFT) 

On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, jordie chambers wrote:

> 
> I don't find Ernest Hemingway's homosexuality, if it's
> true, upsetting.  If I was an incorrigible homophobe, my
> love for his art would remain.  There are morons
> everywhere who will tell you that his struggle for
> machismo and the subsequent truth about his homosexuality
> describes his character in full.  These, and other morons,
> upset me.  I am going to sound unoriginal and childish in
> the next few sentences, but I don't believe I'm unoriginal
> and childish.
>   
> It's about sterotyping.  It's natural, it's fine, the
> human mind is built to categorize information into neat
> piles or types.  Everybody can be dissected and typed into
> a dichotomy of personal attributes.  Each branch of the
> dichotomy is a category inside another category - each
> category a stereotype.  Hemingway, in one of those
> branches, is a homosexual.  To look at that one branch and
> deduce what must be on the other branches based on what
> was observed is a characteristic of morons.  For someone
> to deduce that Hemingway is a homosexual based on a
> repression of emotion is moronic.  Even more moronic is
> the assumption that his literature will reveal his
> homosexuality or his homosexuality will reveal his
> literature.
> 
> I'm not insinuating anyone that challenges Hemingway is a
> moron, I just can't stand to see Hemingway abused by morons.


I agree with Jordie about Hemingway, but according to me the question is
far different.
And it's not only about homosexuality or similar "kind of crap"(e.g. Are
you going to dislike Herny cause of his homosexuality? Do you? Yes, of
course, the mother of stupids is always pregnant! (a bad translation of an
italian rime)).
The central question is the relationships between life and work of poets,
writers, artist and so on.

Why someone need to know everything about life and (sexual, eating,
reading...)preferences of a person? Does this give you a full
comprehension or a better understending of his work? Mmmmm....
Probably yes and no...
But I'm sure this drive us to a determinism which is strictly for the
birds. Life can influence your work, but we have to pay attention to the
work, not to the life. 
First of all we are a reader, and we have to like or dislike books, poems,
painting, not people. Or probably we're a little fetish...



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