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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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MONTH: January/February 2007
The case for Ernest Hemingway
Michael Ogorzaly in The Case Against
Bullighting appears to have quoted Ernest Hemingway far out of context.
The reference is from the opening chapter of Death In The Afternoon, in
which--from the first sentence--Hemingway bluntly acknowledged the cruelty
of bullfighting, with emphasis on the injuries done to horses.
Hemingway described his horror at how
Greeks evacuating Smyrna in 1922 broke the legs of their pack donkeys
and pushed them into the sea to drown, an episode he covered for the Toronto
Telegram Syndicate as a young reporter and described again in his 1924
short story On The Quai At Smyrna. Heming-way recounted his intervention
on many occasions (also described by others) to assist downed horses in
the streets, and his fondness for dogs and cats--especially cats, who
were his desk companions for most of his life.
Hemingway then analyzed why his response
to horse injuries in the bullring was not what he had expected it would
be, not what he had thought would be in character for him and in keeping
with his values, and went on to explore why bullfighting audiences respond
to the injuries suffered by the horses quite differently from their response
to the suffering and death of the bulls, even laughing as horses are disemboweled.
Hemingway stated that he did not consider
horses being disemboweled something to laugh at. Then he explained that
in the classic definitions of Greek theatre, one of the venues in which
modern bullfighting evolved (chiefly in Minoa), the horses in the bullring
are cast in the "comic" role, while the bull's role is "tragic."
This is a matter of the structure of the event. The bull bravely faces
an unavoidable fate; the horses are agents in bringing it about, whose
"failure" sets up the final confrontation.
"The tragedy is all centered in the
bull and in the man," observed Hemingway. "The tragic climax
of the horse's career has occurred off stage at an earlier time, when
he was bought by the horse contractor for use in the bull ring."
Hemingway concluded, "I suppose,
from a modern moral point of view, that is, a Christian point of view,
the whole bullfight is indefensible; there is certainly much cruelty,
there is always danger, either sought or unlooked for, and there is always
death, and I should not try to defend it now, only to tell honestly the
things I have found true about it. To do this I must be altogether frank,
or try to be, and if those who read this decide with disgust that it is
written by some one who lacks their, the readers', fineness of feeling
I can only plead that this may be true. But whoever reads this can only
truly make such a judgment when he, or she, has seen the things that are
spoken of and knows truly what their reactions to them would be."
During this discussion, Hemingway also
wrote, in one of his most often misrepresented passages, "From observation
I would say that people may possibly be divided into two general groups:
those who identify themselves with animals, and those who identify themselves
with human beings. I believe, after experience and observation, that those
people who identify themselves with animals, that is, the almost professional
lovers of dogs and other beasts, are capable of greater cruelty to human
beings than those who do not identify themselves readily with animals.
It seems as though there were a fundamental cleavage between people on
this basis, although people who do not identify themselves with animals
may, while not loving animals in general, be capable of great affection
for an individual animal, a dog, a cat, or a horse, for instance. But
they will base this affection on some quality of, or some association
with, this individual animal rather than on the fact that it is an animal
and hence worthy of love."
The context of the time is essential.
Hemingway then, at age 32, had never had any evident direct association
with anyone who was formally involved in humane work. However, as a journalist,
Hemingway not only wrote somewhat critically about bullfighting and the
Pamplona running of the bulls, three years before writing The Sun Also
Rises, but also reported about and warned against the rise of fascism
and Nazism.
Hemingway was aware that some of the Nazi
leadership espoused anti-vivisectionism and even vegetarianism, as a frequent
cover for anti-Semitic activity, and to court foreign support. Hemingway
never directly addressed the creeping influence of fascism and Nazism
within organized humane work in the 1930s, which he may never have known
about, but he recurrently mentioned the hypocrisy of people who purported
to gentility, including in pampering pets, while glibly endorsing atrocious
social and political policies. In unfavorably commenting about such people,
Hemingway sometimes expressly exempted their pets from his judgement.
Death In The Afternoon appeared shortly
before the Nazis banned kosher slaughter, in the first of 32 "humane
laws" enacted by the Third Reich between 1933 and 1942. Typical were
laws that banned cropping the ears of Alsatians, Dobermans, and other
"Germanic" breeds, but did not protect other dogs, and which
forbade pet-keeping by Jews and gypsies. Most of the Nazi "humane
laws" were passed before 1938; many were uncritically lauded by leading
humane societies in the U.S., France, Britain, and Switzerland. Several
humane societies urged that the Nazis should be emulated, to their later
chagrin.
Former Nazi sympathizers remained prominent
in animal advocacy for decades--including the anti-vivisectionist Hans
Reusch, now 91, who for more than 20 years has often bitterly attacked
Animal Liberation author Peter Singer, born shortly after his parents
fled Nazi Germany. Their conflicting backgrounds may either have little
or much to do with their differing outlooks. Reusch drove for the Nazi-sponsored
Auto Union racing team in 1938. He reputedly influenced the renowned Italian
driver Tazio Nuvolari to also drive for Auto Union, which was the original
maker of the Volkswagen "beetle," and may have annoyed Hemingway
when his novel The Racer (1953) was favorably mentioned by critics alongside
The Old Man & The Sea (1952).
Hemingway's only real success written
during his last 21 years, The Old Man & The Sea portrayed killing
a large fish as a tragic event, that the killer lived to regret.
Hemingway's concern about the Nazis and
their U.S. and European backers, visible in most of his work during the
1930s and 1940s, is not to be confused with what he might have thought
of the modern animal rights movement, which he did not live to see.
Hemingway did state several times his
respect for opponents of bullfighting and hunting who practiced vegetarianism,
in contrast to his contempt for hypocricy.
Both Death In The Afternoon and The Green
Hills of Africa (1935), about Hemingway's first African safari, emphasize
his view that a man killing an animal should exhibit the same virtues
that he saw in animals who may charge their killers, defending themselves,
their mates, and their young. In both books Hemingway addressed aspects
of blood sports that he felt were open to moral question.
Certainly the young Hemingway acknowledged much more mixed feelings about
harming animals than the middle-aged Hemingway, who after winning the
1954 Nobel Prize for Literature, lapsed into alcoholic self-parody.
Of significance is that in The Sun Also Rises, about a man who lost his genitals to shrapnel in World War I, Hemingway used the Pamplona bull run as a thematic device to satirize the lengths men will go to in trying to demonstrate manly qualities which might be called into question. --Merritt Clifton