Function of nostalgia: Ernest Hemingway
Creators: name: Tanner, Stephen L
Publisher: name: University of Utah
Year: 2012
Subjects: Hemingway, Ernest

description: Wright Morris once made the statements "The 'subject' of Wolfe,  Hemingway, and Faulkner, however various the backgrounds, however eontrasting  the styles, pushed to its extremity, is nostalgia." The chapters  which follow are, in a sense, an examination of how valid this  statement is in regard to Hemingway, but in them I have gone beyond just  considerations of nostalgia as "subject" to examine how nostalgia functions  as a technical device and what significance it has for an understanding  of Hemingway as artist. It should be understood that I am not  attempting to explain all of Hemingway in terms of nostalgia; no one  critical approach can provide all of the answers to why a man writes  fiction and what that fiction means. My purpose has been to concentrate  on an element in Hemingway's writing which I feel is important for a  thorough understanding of Hemingway and which, as far as I know, has previously  received little consideration.  I have used the word "nostalgia" in my title with some reservations  because the meaning of this word is rather ambiguous. In the past  it simply meant homesickness, but now, according to Webster's Third International  Dictionary, it means "a wistful or excessively sentimental sometimes  abnormal yearning for return to or return of some real or romanticized  period or irrecoverable condition or setting in the past." But even  this broad definition is not completely satisfactory, probably because the feelings to which the term nostalgia is applied are themselves very  difficult to describe because of their subtlety and evanescence. In the  essay quoted above, Mr. Morris says;  The power and sources of nostalgia lie beyond the scalpel.  Nostalgia sings in the blood, and with age it grows thicker,  and when all other things fail it joins men in a singular brotherhood.  Wherever they live in the present, or hope to live in the  future, it is in the past that you will truly find them. In the  past one is safely out of time but not out of mind.  Nostalgia is not associated with any particular era or any particular  civilization or culture. It is ancient and modern, rural and urban. It is  found in primitive societies as well as advanced. It is a phenomenon fundamental  to the human creature, Beardsly Ruml, in an article entitled "Some  Notes on Nostalgia" says;  A recognition of the fundamental and pervasive influence of the  nostalgic, under whatever names, will enable us to interpret  human behavior with a new realism. This re-interpretation of  human behavior will make it possible for us to rewrite the drama  of sin and self and sex. . . .The understanding of interpersonal  relationships also requires an appreciation of the role played by  nostalgic sentiments. We need to realize that friendship, affection,  love, whether between persons of the same or of different  sexes, have an emotional basis that is always in part and frequently  dominantly nostalgic.  As I use the term "nostalgia," I will be referring primarily to a person's  emotional response to memories of places and events which are, for him,  associated with pleasure or satisfaction of some sort, keeping in mind that  such emotional response is basic to the human psychology. Ernest Hemingway  seemed to realize that an understanding of the nostalgic "will enable us  to interpret human behavior with a new realism," and he did make use of  his understanding of the nostalgic in his attempt to "rewrite the drama  of sin and self and sex."