I really appreciated this article and your insight into Hemingway's iceberg theory and it's connection to the reading of the Old Testament! It makes me want to read both more now. I couldn't help but think while I was reading that this quality of writing is also found very poignantly in Chaim Potok's works as well - which makes total sense given how saturated he was in the Tanakh as a Hasidic Jew.
This is beautiful. It also makes me wonder—as one who sometimes preaches—if the point of preaching isn't to bear witness, to testify to God and to his ways, more than it is to explain the details of biblical texts.
Part of Hemingway's style is a deceptive simplicity. Partly this is, I think, parallelism, a Biblical form of rhetoric. The passage you quote, for example, relies on simple repetitions that successively develop or modify the previous instance, or contradict it somewhat. But like Larkin, he is also able to hide his metaphors in descriptions you could otherwise read as emotionless scenery.
"The sun was low and soon it would be behind the clouds." This is a form of parallelism because the second phrase is implied in the first, and redundant from the perspective of literalism. It is also a metaphor that summarises the emotions wrought by the facts of the preceding passage, much as Larkin's observation "someone running up to bowl" is a symbol of the marriages he describes throughout "The Whitsun Weddings."
Yes, the first time I thought that about dialogue in the Bible was when reading about the crowd's unanimous response to seeing the Apostles speaking in tongues, at the beginning of Acts. I've always imagined a kind of Greek chorus inventing these words.
Reading Hemingway generally makes me need the toilet, as he has a drink or two every second line!
I really appreciated this article and your insight into Hemingway's iceberg theory and it's connection to the reading of the Old Testament! It makes me want to read both more now. I couldn't help but think while I was reading that this quality of writing is also found very poignantly in Chaim Potok's works as well - which makes total sense given how saturated he was in the Tanakh as a Hasidic Jew.
This is beautiful. It also makes me wonder—as one who sometimes preaches—if the point of preaching isn't to bear witness, to testify to God and to his ways, more than it is to explain the details of biblical texts.
Part of Hemingway's style is a deceptive simplicity. Partly this is, I think, parallelism, a Biblical form of rhetoric. The passage you quote, for example, relies on simple repetitions that successively develop or modify the previous instance, or contradict it somewhat. But like Larkin, he is also able to hide his metaphors in descriptions you could otherwise read as emotionless scenery.
"The sun was low and soon it would be behind the clouds." This is a form of parallelism because the second phrase is implied in the first, and redundant from the perspective of literalism. It is also a metaphor that summarises the emotions wrought by the facts of the preceding passage, much as Larkin's observation "someone running up to bowl" is a symbol of the marriages he describes throughout "The Whitsun Weddings."
Yes, the first time I thought that about dialogue in the Bible was when reading about the crowd's unanimous response to seeing the Apostles speaking in tongues, at the beginning of Acts. I've always imagined a kind of Greek chorus inventing these words.
Reading Hemingway generally makes me need the toilet, as he has a drink or two every second line!
*unison, not unanimous (they weren't unanimous, as some thought the Apostles were behaving as if they were characters in a Hemingway novel!)