Maandag 24 september 2007 - Ernest Hemingway: 'Undefeated'

Een stukje uit het begin van ‘The old man and the sea’ van Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) heeft me vandaag geraakt en veel voor me betekend.

Hier komt het zinnetje: ‘He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.’

Hemingway begint zijn schildering van het avontuur met een tekening van de oude man, de oude visser. In de ogen van zijn collega’s stelt het mannetje niets voor. Meewarig kijken ze naar de mislukte visser: in tachtig dagen vangt hij niks. Hij is dus niks. Maar al het water van de zee wast niet af dat zijn ogen van hetzelfde wezen zijn als de zee en dat ze onverslagen zijn, ‘undefeated’.

Vanmiddag heb ik er met Anneke over gepraat en verteld dat het me zo geraakt had. En toen vroeg Anneke aan me: ‘En wat is er van jou na alle erge dingen die er gebeurd zijn nog ‘undefeated’?’. Ineens legde zij de verbinding tussen het fragment en mij, tussen de onverslagen man die ik ervoer als een projectie van mezelf. Plotseling en onverwacht kwam de onderste steen bij me naar boven en nog veel méér! Even had ik geen bodem meer dan alleen maar emotie. Heb toen echt gehuild van ontroering. Later heb ik die ontroering ook met Laura besproken en die begreep het. Geert Jan vertelde vrijdag, dat het leven soms voelt als een brandende kool van binnen. En zo is het: het vuur gaat niet uit. Soms een raadsel dat het zo blijft smeulen, het gáát maar niet uit. Tot overmaat vroeg Laura aan me: ‘Wat zegt je hart? Volg je wel de stem van je hart?’. En mijn wedervraag: ‘Wil je nooit ophouden met me dat te vragen?’.

Het hart van de oude man was ‘undefeated’. En dat vind ik zo’n onbegrijpelijk wonder, zo’n onpeilbare genade. En zó aangrijpend ook, ik kan er onbegrijpelijk blij en stil van worden, dat het binnenste intact is, niet aangeraakt dus, niet ge-raakt dus, ‘undefeated’, ongeslagen.
De omstandigheden van de oude man geven alle aanleiding om te zeggen dat hij ‘verslagen’ is. Wat stelt zo’n haveloze visser die niks vangt nou helemaal voor? Zo wordt er gepraat, zo wordt er gekeken naar je. Maar pas op, dat je er niet in meegaat. Wat je echt voorstelt ligt niet in de ogen van de anderen (Sartre zegt van wel), maar het echte is de taal van je hart. Wat zegt je hart?

De kleine jongen, die altijd mee ging vissen met de oude man, mocht van zijn vader niet meer omgaan met zo'n loser. De jongen zegt: "But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks."
"I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted."
"It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him."
"I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal."
"He hasn't much faith."
"No," the old man said. "But we have. Haven't we?"
Daar heb je de taal van het hart: ‘We have faith’. Het vuur van binnen.

Ergens spreekt de grote Russische schrijver Dostojevsky van die kern in de mens, dat onverwoestbare, en dat noemt hij - geloof ik - het heilige in de mens, datgene wat eigenlijk van een andere orde is dan het gewone. Het heilige in de mens, dat onaantastbaar is, en wat de grootste misdaad is als je dat schendt. Als je het vuur van binnen dooft.

Dat zei ik ook nog tegen Anneke vanmiddag: wat er eigenlijk ‘undefeated’ is, is de warmte van mijn hart, de teerheid (toe maar...). De warmte is niet weg, het lééft nog. Ik kan nog warmte géven, dat is het enige. Soms is er niets meer mogelijk dan alleen die warmte maar te geven. Er is er maar één die mij echt die warmte kan géven, zonder dat ik erom vraag. En daarom wil ik ook geven, nog voor je erom vraagt. Staat dat ook niet ergens in de Bergrede: je hemelse vader weet wat je nodig hebt, nog eer je hem bidt? Zo diep heeft hij lief: je hoeft er niet eens om te vragen, sterker: als je erom vráágt, krijg je het antwoord dat je wilt, namelijk liefde. Maar hoe bestaat het godswonder dat iemand je liefheeft zónder welke vraag dan ook, onvoorwaardelijk en spontaan en voortdurend? Dat is toch in strijd met elke ervaring?!

Nou, als je het weergaloos mooie stukje van het begin van de roman wilt lezen, hieronder volgt het. Daaronder vind je nog twee essays over het boek en een samenvatting van het verhaal. Hemingway kreeg in 1954 de Nobelprijs voor de literatuur.

Het fragment:
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.
Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.
"Santiago," the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money."
The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.
"No," the old man said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them."
"But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks."
"I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted."
"It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him."
"I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal."
"He hasn't much faith."
"No," the old man said. "But we have. Haven't we?"
"Yes," the boy said. "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll take the stuff home."
"Why not?" the old man said. "Between fishermen."
They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.
When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.
"Santiago," the boy said.
"Yes," the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.
"Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?"
"No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net."
"I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you, I would like to serve in some way."
"You bought me a beer," the old man said. "You are already a man."
"How old was I when you first took me in a boat?"
"Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you remember?"
"I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me."
"Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?"
"I remember everything from when we first went together."
The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.
"If you were my boy I'd take you out and gamble," he said. "But you are your father's and your mother's and you are in a lucky boat."
"May I get the sardines? I know where I can get four baits too."
"I have mine left from today. I put them in salt in the box."
"Let me get four fresh ones."
"One," the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.
"Two," the boy said.
"Two," the old man agreed. "You didn't steal them?"
"I would," the boy said. "But I bought these."
"Thank you," the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.
"Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current," he said.
"Where are you going?" the boy asked.
"Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light."
"I'll try to get him to work far out," the boy said. "Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid."
"He does not like to work too far out."
"No," the boy said. "But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin."
"Are his eyes that bad?"
"He is almost blind."
"It is strange," the old man said. "He never went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes."
"But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good."
"I am a strange old man."
"But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?"
"I think so. And there are many tricks."

Samenvatting van het verhaal:
De oude visser Santiago heeft 84 dagen lang geen vis gevangen. Dat is de reden waarom de leerjongen Manolin van zijn ouders niet langer met hem mee mag en zijn geluk moet beproeven bij andere vissers. Manolin is echter gehecht aan de oude man en bezoekt hem elke avond in zijn hutje, helpt hem met het binnenhalen van het materiaal, zorgt voor zijn eten en praat met hem over hun gezamenlijke passie: honkbal, en met name de Amerikaanse sportheld Joe DiMaggio. Santiago vertelt Manolin dat hij de volgende dag ver de Golf zal opvaren, omdat hij ervan overtuigd is dat hij deze keer een goede vangst zal hebben.
Zo vertrekt hij op de 85e dag, zet zijn lijnen uit, en inderdaad heeft hij midden op die dag een grote vis aan de haak. Het blijkt een grote marlijn, die hij niet binnen kan halen. Het dier is zelfs zo groot en sterk dat het zijn bootje op sleeptouw neemt. Santiago geeft de strijd niet op en houdt twee dagen en nachten vol, tot hij gewond en uitgeput is. Hij heeft echter groot respect voor zijn 'tegenstander', die hij beschouwt als een 'broeder'.
Op de derde dag begint de vis uit vermoeidheid om de boot heen te zwemmen en met zijn laatste krachten weet Santiago het dier tijdens een van diens radeloze sprongen aan zijn harpoen te krijgen. Hij bindt de enorme vis vast aan de zijkant van de boot en gaat op huis aan, met het idee dat hij hiervoor een fikse prijs zal kunnen krijgen, maar ook met de gedachte dat eigenlijk niemand dit dappere dier zou mogen eten.
Op de lange weg terug naar de kust vallen haaien, aangetrokken door het bloed, het lichaam van de vis aan en een nieuw gevecht dient zich aan. Bij de verdediging van zijn vangst doodt hij een van de haaien, maar raakt daarbij zijn harpoen kwijt. Hij improviseert een nieuw wapen door zijn mes vast te maken aan een van de roeiriemen. Op die manier weet hij zeven haaien te verslaan. Inmiddels is echter van zijn vis alleen nog een karkas over.
Als hij de volgende ochtend eindelijk de kust bereikt, strompelt hij naar huis en valt daar uittgeput in een diepe slaap. Een groepje vissers, niet op de hoogte van Santiago's reis, verzamelt zich rond zijn boot en bewondert de restanten van de grote vis. Toeristen in het plaatselijke café denken dat het een haai is.
Manolin, die al die tijd bezorgd op zijn terugkeer heeft gewacht, huilt van opluchting als hij de oude man in slaap vindt. Hij haalt koffie en een krant voor Santiago, en als de oude man wakker wordt, belooft Manolin dat zij op de volgende reis weer samen zullen zijn. Als Santiago weer in slaap valt, droomt hij van leeuwen op de kust van Afrika.

Hieronder een essay over de filosofie van het verhaal:

The Old Man
There are few novels I identify with more than Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. On the simplest level, I like the fishing story itself. Santiago knows how to fish well, knows the rituals that should accompany fishing. We first meet Santiago in the midst of a string of bad luck, a string every fisherman has endured. Every fisherman worthy of his bait bucket also wants to catch “the big one,” the one that will truly show how good a fisherman you really are. It is what fisherman tales are made of.

More than that, though, I identify with the stoical philosophy that underlies Santiago’s actions. If I were put in his situation, I would hope that I would be strong enough to do exactly what he does.

Although the plot of this novella is remarkably simple and clear, the meaning of the story is anything but simple. Although realistically portrayed, Santiago seems more mythic and symbolic than realistic. Perhaps it is because we don’t see his flaws the way we see flaws in Hemingway’s characters in other works. Maybe Santiago is the embodiment of Hemingway’s Code without the all too human flaws that accompany most of his characters. In many ways The Old Man and the Sea seems more like an extended poem or a fable than a novel.

When we first meet Santiago, though, he seems an unlikely hero. Looking at his small boat, the reader sees that “the sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.” Santiago himself seems to reflect the state of his boat: “His shirt had been patched so many times that it was like the sail and the patches were faded to many different shades by the sun.” Perhaps if we saw him in the distance like this, we would merely feel sorry, sorry that such an old man still had to set out to sea to earn his living, sorry that there wasn’t someone to take care of him and do his fishing for him. Maybe if we had true empathy we would even feel sorry for him the same way he feels sorry for the small birds he later meets at sea:
He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, the birds have a harder life than we do except for the-robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?
Santiago, in his quest to catch the big one, is like the small tern. His small sailboat, seen from a distance, must very much resemble a small bird hovering over the ocean. And the human soul, ever in search of life’s true meaning, is surely buffeted as roughly as any bird crossing the ocean.

If we judged Santiago by his boat’s appearance or by his own appearance, however, we would be very mistaken. Only by looking deeper, by looking into his very soul would we truly be able to measure this man. Hemingway reveal Santiago’s true strength by describing his eyes, the proverbial window into the soul, “ Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”

It is, perhaps, only Santiago’s courage that saves him. Obviously life has turned against him. The boy who has accompanied him while fishing for years has been forced by his parents to leave Santiago’s boat because Santiago is “unlucky.” How else to explain why such an accomplished fisherman has gone 85 days without a catch, unless one believes in the Fates? When met by such misfortune, courage remains the last bastion against total defeat.

Santiago’s courage is revealed in his dreams of the lions he had seen when he had sailed to Africa as a young man:
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy.
All of the things he no “longer dreamed of” have been important in his life, but they are merely memories of the past, and, though memories of past victories or of past loves may comfort you in old age, alone, they cannot sustain you. Only the courage to face today’s challenges can help us prevail.

Repeatedly in the story Santiago turns to the great DiMaggio for inspiration. In the beginning this seems to be true merely because DiMaggio’s father was a fisherman, “I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing," the old man said. "They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand." But there is a lot more to the connection than this. First of all, DiMaggio plays for the Yankees, the greatest team in baseball. When he had won the arm-wrestling tournament, Santiago had been called The Champion, and DiMaggio is the champion of baseball.

Perhaps more importantly, Santiago identifies DiMaggio with perfectionism, “ But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.” Doing things “correctly,” “the right way” or “with precision” is the essence of Hemingway’s Code. The most obvious example of Santiago’s precision is the way he maintains his fishing lines:
He looked down into the water and watched the lines that went straight down into the dark of the water. He kept them straighter than anyone did, so that at each level in the darkness of the stream there would be a bait waiting exactly where he wished it to be for any fish that swam there. Others let them drift with the current and sometimes they were at sixty fathoms when the fishermen thought they were at a hundred.
But, he thought, I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact.
Most people at this point would prefer luck because it brings quicker results, but Santiago knows instinctively that doing the “right thing” is the only way to win a true victory, a victory that can stand up to Death itself.
Nobel-toespraak Hemingway:
«Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.»

Prior to the speech, H.S. Nyberg, Member of the Swedish Academy, made the following comment: «Another deep regret is that the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, Mr. Ernest Hemingway, on account of ill health has to be absent from our celebration. We wish to express our admiration for the eagle eye with which he has observed, and for the accuracy with which he has interpreted the human existence of our turbulent times; also for the admirable restraint with which he has described their naked struggle. The human problems which he has treated are relevant to all of us, living as we do in the confused conditions of modern life; and few authors have exercised such a wide influence on contemporary literature in all countries. It is our sincere hope that he will soon recover health and strength in pursuit of his life-work.»

Nog een essay over het verhaal:

Themes in the Novella
A commonplace among literary authorities is that a work of truly great literature invites reading on multiple levels or re-reading at various stages in the reader’s life. At each of these readings, the enduring work presumably yields extended interpretations and expanded meanings. Certainly, The Old Man and the Sea fits that description. The novella invites, even demands, reading on multiple levels.
For example, readers can receive the novella as an engaging and realistic story of Santiago, the old man; Manolin, the young man who loves him; and Santiago’s last and greatest battle with a giant marlin. Indeed, Hemingway himself insisted that the story was about a real man and a real fish. Critics have pointed to Hemingway’s earlier essay—which mentions a presumably real fisherman who travels far out to sea in a small boat, catches a great fish, and then loses it to sharks—as the seed from which the novella springs.
However, the novella also clearly fits into the category of allegory—a story with a surface meaning and one or more under-the-surface meanings; a narrative form so ancient and natural to the human mind as to be universal; a form found in pagan mythology, in both Testaments of the Bible, and in Classical to Post-Modern literature. Likewise, the characters become much more than themselves or even types—they become archetypes (universal representations inherited from the collective consciousness of our ancestors and the fundamental facts of human existence).
From this perspective, Santiago is mentor, spiritual father, old man, or old age; and Manolin is pupil, son, boy, or youth. Santiago is the great fisherman and Manolin his apprentice—both dedicated to fishing as a way of life that they were born to and a calling that is spiritually enriching and part of the organic whole of the natural world. Santiago, as the greatest of such fishermen and the embodiment of their philosophy, becomes a solitary human representative to the natural world. He accepts the inevitability of the natural order, in which all creatures are both predator and prey, but recognizes that all creatures also nourish one another. He accepts the natural cycle of human existence as part of that natural order, but finds within himself the imagination and inspiration to endure his greatest struggle and achieve the intangibles that can redeem his individual life so that even when destroyed he can remain undefeated.
In living according to his own code of behavior, accepting the natural order and cycle of life, struggling and enduring and redeeming his individual existence through his life’s work, and then passing on to the next generation everything he values, Santiago becomes an everyman (an archetypal representation of the human condition). His story becomes everyone’s story and, as such, becomes genuinely uplifting. As the tourists who mistake the marlin for a shark still comprehend from its skeleton something of the great fish’s grandeur, readers of different ages and levels of understanding can find something inspirational in this story—perhaps even more if they dip into its waters more than once.