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A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition
A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition
A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition
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A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition

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The definitive edition of the classic novel of love during wartime, featuring all of the alternate endings: “Fascinating…serves as an artifact of a bygone craft, with handwritten notes and long passages crossed out, giving readers a sense of an author’s process” (The New York Times).

Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield—weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.

Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right. This edition collects all of the alternative endings together for the first time, along with early drafts of other essential passages, offering new insight into Hemingway’s craft and creative process and the evolution of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Featuring Hemingway’s own 1948 introduction to an illustrated reissue of the novel, a personal foreword by the author’s son Patrick Hemingway, and a new introduction by the author’s grandson Seán Hemingway, this edition of A Farewell to Arms is truly a celebration.

Editor's Note

Hemingway’s finest…

This semi-autobiographical account of an improbable love during WWI showcases Hemingway at his finest. The haunting descriptions of destruction, despair, and hope evoke every emotion.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherScribner
Release dateJul 10, 2012
ISBN9781451681871
A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition
Author

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the twentieth century's most important novelists, as well as a brilliant short story writer and foreign correspondent. His body of work includes the novels A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, and in 1954 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Rating: 3.8704453441295548 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    My least favorite of Papa's major novels. It merits mention fo rbeing a conversation starter. I was reading this in a pub and was approached by a guy. He proved to be a nutter. I didn't know that then. He approached, pointed to my book and began rambling about how Hemingway and Hunter Thompson understood the essence of things (this was years before Thompson's suicide) and that their lives of excess were a just a relief for their clairty. That is my paraphrase. I wound up talking to the guy for hours and drinking a deal of beeer. I have seen him twice since then. He doesn't appear to remember me.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Situated around the first world war. Hemingway is so matter of fact about many things. There is something I don't like about this book...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Classic war novel, extremely well written, memorable passages. Something everyone should have read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As a Hemingway fan, I'd put this one towards the bottom of the list of his novels. Read 'Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?' instead.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Hemingways gaafste roman. Opvallend contrast tussen harde oorlogscenes en sweet talk tussen de geliefden. Hun relatie is onromantisch, maar toch zoet;
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I must admit that while I have been mesmerised by anything Hemingway for some time now, it was a bit of an effort to get through the first half of this book. While my attitude towards the book changed each time I got back into it, I think the source of the problem for me was the emptiness that can only be expressed by those who have first-hand experience of large-scale conventional war. Nonetheless, and despite the historical background to the story, I found it to be written clearly in the present tense. Yet I couldn’t help but sense the emptiness I had once felt when I was about seven years old. I remember visiting, for no particular reason, an old war widow, who gave me two shillings (five cent pieces - one for me and the other for my sister) but then she cried and pointed to the faded photographs of her husband and her brothers who were all killed in the Second World War. The empty feeling of the interior of her dark house with its art deco furniture and the smell of stale tobacco smoke accompanied me throughout “A Farewell to Arms” and I think I avoided it until I decided that I would finish it off in one go. As the climax emerged suddenly towards the end of the book, I was hooked and couldn’t put it down. By this stage of the plot the war was almost an afterthought for the main characters and bits of classic Hemingway emerge (beards, boxing, and booze). But by the end, I needed some quiet time to emotionally recover. I’ve never cried from reading a book before. I still don’t like this book. Nevertheless, it is truly magnificent and how somebody in their mid-twenties could comprehend so much beggars belief. It can only be genius.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I see so many mixed reviews about Hemingway's novels. This was my second book by Hemingway that I have read and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it! It was by no means the perfect read but I really enjoyed the setting and the characters. There were a few times it got a little sluggish but for the most part I really liked this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Woof - what a depressing book in many ways. I had a love/hate relationship with this book while reading it. The writing style of short and to the point sentences was both appealing and frustrating. I felt that it made the characters a bit too one dimensional, but at the same time helped give a matter-of-factness to the war and the people living through it. I am glad I read this, my first Hemingway, and feel like I understand the point of the hopelessness of war and life of the time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed the book. It moves through different emotions and seasons seamlessly even though there are dramatic shits in action. I found myself very involved with the characters which seemed distant.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My encounter with Hemingway has been a long time coming; he sat on my TBR pile for more than a year. Hemingway employs a unique style, a deceptive simplicity that hides layers, and at first I misinterpreted. The spare style had me initially convinced that I was reading a scene from the narrator's childhood. Realizing my mistake, I felt the detached manner reflected his sense of not belonging, a lack of identification with the troops he serves with. When he exchanges a goodnight with the priest who’s been subjected to ribald humour, it's clear he relates more to this outsider than his fellow servicemen.There's an interesting repetition of words/ideas. From chapter four: "It evidently made no difference whether I was there to look after things or not.” Just a few lines later: “Evidently it did not matter whether I was there or not." Does Hemingway want his readers to pay special attention to this point, or is this to convey a sentiment the narrator dwells upon? It happens mostly in the early chapters, then crops up again later.The love story begins when Catherine reveals that she sees as clearly as he does the game they’re playing, and suddenly he views her as a person and doesn’t know how to deal with the emotion this engenders. He tries to treat it lightly, then is surprised when he cannot. Their romance develops in a charming way, but takes a poorer turn when she makes statements like "There isn't any me anymore. Just what you want." But how much does she mean it, really? They mutually acknowledge his lies, or at least she does; but he does not challenge her words that might be spoken only as part of their game of love.You cannot run away or hide from hardship, is the moral. Or perhaps you can for a time, but you'd best appreciate the interval. The narrator has a premonition of this when he is lying awake in the chalet. He has escaped Italy, but he cannot possibly escape all bad things, nor predict from what quarter the next will arrive. The movie "Silver Linings Playbook" spoiled the ending for me, but I was made glad I knew what was coming. War cannot last forever, thus a farewell to arms; nor can most else.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Made it to chapter twelve, decided I din't care about any of the characters. DNF
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A classic. Righty so.What a great novel! Man, woman, the war, friendship, respect, love, despair, cruelty .... All the big themes in a love story that in the same time is a powerful anti-war statement. A story of courage and of despair in the same chapter. A strong "wish i was here" feeling that in the same lines turns to an even stronger "i wish i was not here" sentiment.The very easy looking writing style reinforces this, the robustness of the story is in this very straight forward writing, empowered by the repeats of words, sentences and feelings which give the storyline in moments a kind of mantra-like voodoo-ism. I am lucky, i am so lucky, i don't know how lucky i am, please tell me we are lucky ... One can see from faraway that this "lick" is under heavy threats and the repeats try to give some strength to the idea.Amazing for me is that this story is still so readable, so attractive, whilst it is nearly a hundred years old.Hemingway is really one of the great writers of his time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Letztes Jahr waren wir in Italien, genau in der Gegend, in der Hemingway im ersten Weltkrieg war, und sahen dort auch Schautafeln zu "Hemingway's War". Seitdem wollte ich das Buch lesen, in dem Hemingway seine Erlebnisse verarbeitet. Er selbst war noch blutjung, 19 Jahre alt bei Kriegsende, und hatte rein optisch noch nichts gemeinsam mit dem kräftigem Mann, den man von Fotos kennt. Hier ist er als junger Soldat mit dem Vorbild für die weibliche Hauptperson zu sehen. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10561536/Ernest-Hemingway-and-the-Dear-John-letter-from-his-First-World-War-love.html Im Buch beschreibt er recht exakt, was er auch selbst erlebte, Kämpfe, eine schwere Verletzung, die Liebe zu einer Krankenschwester. Im Buch desertiert er allerdings, geht mit der Schwester eine Beziehung ein, sie wird schwanger. Für mich ist das Hauptthema die Sinnlosigkeit von Leben und Sterben, v.a. im Krieg, doch eigentlich unabhängig davon. Denn sinnloser Tod holt den Protagonisten auch in ganz friedlichen Situationen ein, schlussendlich stellt sich daher die Frage, wozu wir eigentlich leben - vom Tod sind wir immer umgeben. Passini äußert sich vehement gegen den Krieg, plädiert dafür den Kampf einzustellen und wird noch in der gleichen Minute getötet. Am Ende des Buches reflektiert Henry über einen Ast mit Ameisen, den er einmal ins Feuer geworfen hatte - die Gelegenheit, den Messias zu spielen und die Ameisen zu retten, ließ er ungenutzt - wie der Messias selbst. "Das tat man eben. Man starb. Man wusste nicht, worum es sich handelte. Man hatte nicht Zeit, es zu erfahren. Man warf einen herein und sagte einem die Regeln, und beim ersten Male, wenn man von der Grundlinie fort war, töteten sie einen. Oder sie töteten einen auch für nichts und wieder nichts.“ Diese Stellen und diese Auseinandersetzung mit Tod und Sterben sind wirklich stark. Leider konnte ich mit der vielgepriesenen Liebesgeschichte wenig anfangen. Einerseits finde ich die weibliche Hauptfigur wirklich sehr holzschnittartig gezeichnet. Andererseits lag es sicher auch an der Sprache/Übersetzung. Die Dialoge kamen mir künstlich und gestelzt vor. Die altmodischen Ausdrücke wie "ulkig" und "famos" fand ich auch eher unpassend. Bisher hatte ich Hemingway größtenteils auf Englisch gelesen. Das ist vermutlich empfehlenswert, da er ja auch relativ leicht zu lesen ist.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I found this quite frustrating to read.At times the way he writes conversations are incredibly confusing, just lines and lines of speech, with no indicators as to who is saying what. It's OK for a few lines, but after a page and a half, it's very easy to get lost as to who is saying what. Especially when the conversation is a bit banal and largely pointless. There is an odd use of language as well. At times it feels a bit stilted, at others the word choice is strange. Describing something 3 times in the same sentence as "nice" isn't what I expected. At times the choice of language was simple, at others repetitive, it didn't seem to be elegant or well considered. The tale told is both simple and complicated. The central character is an American of (I think) Italian extraction who is serving in the Italian ambulance service on the Italian front. He's there because he's volunteered, not because he's been conscripted. He gets injured, treated and returned to the front shortly before the big breakthrough and collapse of the Italians at Carporetto. He gets swept up in the retreat and the way that the army degenerates is vividly told. However, it also sees the end of his involvement with the war. However this does not end neatly, his own life disintegrates, with the nurse he had met and fallen in love with escaping over the Swiss boarder with him, before failing to survive childbirth. At times I quite enjoyed this, but I failed to warm to Catherine, she was just so insipid as to be nothing that the narrator did not want her to be. She kept going on about being a good wife to him, if she wanted to do something he didn't she immediately changed her mind. I found her impossible to feel for or warm to. There's much that could have been good in here, but it didn't hang together and I found too much to not enjoy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a classic I always meant to read and I'm glad I did. Most of it was fast moving and the plot was interesting. However, I didn't like the character development, especially of Katherine. She seems to be a stereotypic view of what "a man would want." Even when Katherine is in labor she talks about her "grand husband" and how she wants to be a "good wife." Also the guy is suppose to be so in love with Katherine, but I just didn't feel the connection.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Brutal

    [Crítica a Xelu.net]

    D'alguns llibres em costa molt fer-ne una crítica perquè m'intimiden. Són clàssics o llibres que per una raó o una altra han passat a formar part de la història de la literatura, ja sigui per mèrit propi o per la trajectoria de l'autor. Em passa amb el llibre d'avui, A Farewell to Arms d'Ernest Hemingway. Aquest autor per a mi és poc menys que una llegenda, no perquè hagués llegit cap altra llibre seu abans de llegir-ne aquest, que no és el cas, sino per la manera, el respecte i la veneració amb que n'he sentit a parlar sempre, titllant-lo pràcticament de pare de la literatura moderna. El cas és que vaig sentir un podcast al que proposaven llegir aquest llibre per a comentar-lo més endavant, com si fos un club de lectura, i aquell mateix dia em vaig plantar a l'Fnac i el vaig comprar, i després el vaig llegir, i ara estic aqui i no se ben bé que dir perquè el llibre em supera i qualsevol cosa que digui no li farà justícia, i després algú em farà cas, el llegirà, i si no li agrada tant com a mi em sabrà greu perquè el llibre es mereix ser llegit per tothom, més d'una vegada, i comentat, i treballat, i aprofundit i després tornat a llegir. Tant m'ha agradat. I és que de vegades aquests clàssics s'han d'agafar amb cura, de vegades el seu valor és històric i vistos amb ulls d'avui és difícil valorar-los amb justícia, i està clar també que A Farewell to Arms no és un llibre tan vell, la primera edició és del 1929, però sigui com sigui és perfectament modern i vigent i fàcil de llegir sense deixar de ser subtil, poètic, enigmàtic i viu. El llibre viu i respira i palpita i al final és com una punyalada que et deixa sense alè i que a mi em va fer plorar. Així doncs si això que escric no és gens una crítica objectiva i racional és perquè aquest llibre ha destruït la meva objectivitat. Se suposa que una crítica ha ser un esforç d'anàlisi dels recursos, imaginari, argument, teixit, punt de vista, etc que donen forma a un llibre, per tal d'intentar determinar-ne el seu valor en tant que obra literària, obra d'art, retrat de la psique humana, però aquest llibre excel·leix tant en tots aquests aspectes que parlar-ne em vé gran. Així que ho sento, no en faig cap crítica i em limito a recomanar-vos que no deixeu de llegir aquesta meravella.

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Depressing. Bleak, unemotional and unengaging. I found Hemingway's prose style annoying and his dialogue worse, and I didn't like his characters. On the other hand, I thought that the plot was well-constructed - I'd have been very surprised if it hadn't been - and that the the book did a good job of conveying the bleakness and uncertainty of war. I made it to the end, but it was a struggle at times.I'm aware, though, that I'm in a minority and many people love the very things that made me dislike the book. If you like terse prose and depressing war stories, you'll love this book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Frederic Henry’s memoir of the days he fell in love during his foray into WWI at the front in Italy as an ambulance driver. He is coping with loss and writing out his struggles. It is raining and we are tired but you know now. I will move on.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5***

    Fredrick Henry is a young American, serving as an ambulance driver with the Italian army during WWI. He meets a lovely English nurse, Catherine Barkley, and when he is wounded she devotes herself to his care. Their relationship blooms even as the war continues to suck all hope of a normal life from all those mired in it. More and more disillusioned by the war and threatened not only by the enemy but by the Italians on whose behalf he is fighting, Henry seeks solace with Miss Barkley, and the two of them dream of peace and comfort and a normal life.

    Hemingway himself served as an ambulance driver during WWI, was wounded and received a medal for valor. This novel is one of his earlier works and his style is still a little raw, in my opinion. Yes, he explores the alienation and human tragedy of war, but I never get the feeling that there is a clear sense of purpose or a just cause for which to fight. Henry seems just to have gone to war for the excitement and simple “maleness” of battle. Don’t misunderstand me … I do not think Hemingway is glorifying war. There are plenty of scenes that give the reader the sense of the horrors of the situation, the mind-numbing boredom interrupted by moment of sheer terror, the bone-weary exhaustion of days spent trudging through rain-soaked terrain without shelter, adequate food or rest.

    And then there is the love story. I think my main complaint with this work is that I never really connect to the central characters. Their dialogue seems stilted and over simplified. I don’t really feel love between them. I see them, instead, as two lonely people connected by the circumstances in which they find themselves. I admit to a few fleeting thoughts of “what might have been,” but in general I don’t care enough about them.

    NOTE: The cover of my book is completely different ... yellow, with a purple center block and a black-and-white illustration of a nurse and soldier. But the ISBN number is an exact match
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of the best novels of all time. On the first reading, I hated to turn the page to measure what I lost. From the dust on the leaves of the plane trees to the dialogue of the the two lovers as the train left for the front, a reading peak experience.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I found the dialogue between Henry and Catherine to be silly and inane. Despite depicting the horror of war, this book did nothing to make you root for the couple.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    hemingway appears to be so macho, i thought i wouldn't like his writing but i do. this is a very sad story both romantically and militarily. why would anyone want to go and fight?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My favorite Hemingway!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Well written book as most of Hemingway's books are but the ending is just so sad! I didn't expect it to turn out well but at the same time I didn't expect it end quite so sadly either.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There is just something instantly recognizeable about reading a Hemingway story. A paragraph or two on the first page and you know what you have. I regret not visitng with one of my longtime favorite authors more often this past decade. I wanted to re-read this one for the WWI centennial where it seemed to be an appropriate time. I had slightly forgotten Hemingway's occasional affection for the very long run-on sentence that almost goes on forever. More often they run on just a little, which is what I remember. For some reason it never bothered me much with Hemingway unlike others. Maybe it is just because his writing is so direct that I don't get lost along the way. Then of course there are the very short ones to help create what is distinctly Hemingway.In any event I love this novel. I admire Hemingway's skill at sliding things into sentences, where he talks about one thing but lets you see another or get a glimpse of things to come. It is love in the time of war. It is a heartbreaker for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the end. There are a ridiculous number of passages in this book that I love to read and re-read. One can immerse oneself into this story. It is a memoir, a fictionalized journalistic type of account of Hemingway in Italy in WWI. I don't think it can be viewed any other way. The Italian war was not the same trench warfare of Belgium and France that comes to mind when one thinks of the Great War. The shelling was very destructive and deadly in the mountains. The story begins early during the war and is set in the mountains where the Italian army fought the Austrians. Our narrator, Mr Henry is an American, an ambulance worker. He meets a Scottish woman, Catherine Barkley. Catherine is a little crazy, but she loves Frederic Henry and he loves her even more. You can cry if you want to. I can see how some readers may not like reading this. I am not one of them. I think Hemingway is my Faulkner - he's not for everyone but for me he works.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    The only thing I'll give Hemingway here is that he managed to convey my feelings about war stories in literary form: cold, emotionless, bored-out-of-my-mind...

    Hemingway's characters are less of characters than the generic Sim I can make in 5 seconds
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I don't like the way he writes--very wordy and repetitive, long run-on sentences--never sure who is talking. Didn't like the dialogue: very stilted;
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A superbly written self-pity trip. Beautiful.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Der autobiographisch angehauchte Roman - Hemingway diente im ersten Weltkrieg als Kriegsfreiwilliger im Sanitätsdienst - beschreibt in erster Linie eine Liebesgeschichte zwischen einem amerikanischen Offizier in der italienischen Armee und einer schottischen Krankenschwester. Der Krieg an der Isonzofront bildet lediglich eine Rahmenhandlung. Wer also authentische Kriegsliteratur erwartet, wird enttäuscht. Hemingways Krieg erscheint (trotz beinahe belanglos eingeflochtener Kriegsgräuel, Desertion und Verwundungen) als endlose Abfolge von Lazarettaufenthalten, Fronturlauben, Liebeleien und einer endlosen Abfolge an konsumierten alkoholischen Getränke in diversen Bars und Hotels... Doch auch literarisch überzeugt der Roman überhaupt nicht: Stupide Dialoge wechseln mit uninspirierten Beschreibungen von Alltäglichem. Doch auch bei Dramatischem fehlen Hemingway die passenden Worte, so lautet die Beschreibung eines gefallenen Soldaten nach einem Granatenangriff etwa schlicht: "Er sah sehr tot aus." Passend zum Werk überzeugt auch die deutsche Übersetzung nicht, wer beispielsweise die "Golden Gate Bridge" als "Goldenes Tor" übersetzt, trägt nicht zu besonderer Lesefreude frei.Verglichen mit dem Meisterwerk "Wem die Stunde schlägt" ist "In einem anderen Land" eine einzige Enttäuschung, wer sich also mit Hemingways Kriegserfahrungen auseinandersetzen will, ist mit ersterem weit besser bedient...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway; (4*)I found this to 'one' of Papa's best works. I know that it has been slandered and slammed but this reader appreciated the writing and the story lines.The characters incorporate the desperation of youth, the insanity and traumatization of war and the strategy of day to day living rather than striving for anything like achievement or satisfaction which is the effect of the madness of war upon the human soul. It is a profoundly sexual book. But it also presents a love story between two individuals that has more depth and sensuality than one would expect from Hemingway. In addition, insights into the behavior of the military, both the allies and the axis powers, are fascinating; marked by the idiocy of human beings caught in any dramatic effort. It is a war story that touches on the humans involved and the devastating effect of battle on the individual. It is a love story that ends in tragedy because it is a passion born of war not sincerity. It is a commentary on the madness of politics and the indulgence in mass slaughter in order to accomplish nothing. A very meaningful novel from an author in his prime.I DO recommend this one and found it to be a very satisfying read.

Book preview

A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway

Introduction

A Farewell to Arms is one of the great books of the twentieth century. Ernest Hemingway’s ability to write short stories in a fresh, new, direct prose style gained the attention of the literary world in the 1920s. His first novel, The Sun Also Rises, about the generation of disillusioned expatriates living in Paris after World War I, was an immediate success, but it was with the publication of A Farewell to Arms in 1929 that he cemented his reputation as one of the great writers of his time. For many readers it is his finest novel.

A Farewell to Arms offers readers today an extraordinary glimpse of World War I—the experience of war and of love during war in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Hemingway’s writing is clear and accessible, but generations of scholars attest to the novel’s many complexities. I remember first reading A Farewell to Arms when I was in college. My experience then was quite different from reading it today, twenty-five years later, though no less enjoyable. Hemingway’s novel repays close reading. The enormity of its significance slowly reveals itself when read again and again.

While preparing this new edition with Patrick Hemingway in Montana last November, he remarked to me how carefully the novel was constructed and on the patterns that occur within it. As we were talking we looked out the window of his home on the Missouri River, and Patrick commented that his father’s writing could be compared with nature—a starkly beautiful and complex world that is richly patterned. At that moment two young whitetail bucks ambled up to a willow tree not more than fifteen feet away—a bucolic scene. Patrick moved closer to the window and suggested we watch to see what the two bucks did next. He explained that the annual whitetail rut was just beginning—a time when young males like the two before us typically sparred, instinctual behavior that was a kind of training for when they would compete for a mate. No sooner had he finished his explanation when the two deer squared off and began locking their antlers in playful combat. A few minutes later three young does arrived to watch. Patrick later told me he had never observed this ritual before in the flesh.

In A Farewell to Arms, like in the world of nature, much of significance lies beneath the surface, and yet it is all there if you know what to look for. My grandfather said that he always tried to write on the principle of the iceberg. For the part that shows there are seven-eighths more underwater.1 A particularly important example of Hemingway’s iceberg principle in A Farewell to Arms, one which civilian readers may not immediately recognize, concerns the pistol that Lieutenant Frederic Henry carries. The primary function of an officer’s pistol is to ensure that the enlisted soldiers under his command perform their duties as instructed. General George S. Patton Jr., commander of a vast army during the Allied invasion of Europe in World War II, always carried two pistols—a Smith & Wesson .357 and a Colt .45 model 1873 with matching ivory handles. When Lieutenant Henry is wounded and loses his pistol, he goes out of his way to purchase another before returning to the front. In the course of the Italian retreat from Caporetto, he uses this pistol to stop two men from abandoning their duties. Ironically, Frederic Henry is later nearly shot for being taken as a deserter, which he then becomes in order to save his life. There are many resonances to Hemingway’s novel, some of which read like ancient Greek tragedy. In Euripides’s Medea, the heroine defiantly cries that she would rather go to war three times than go through the pain of childbirth once. In A Farewell to Arms Hemingway juxtaposes the experiences of war and childbirth with tragic consequences.

There have been many introductions to A Farewell to Arms.2 The most important one was written by Hemingway in 1948 to accompany an illustrated edition published that year by Scribner’s. The author’s 1948 introduction is published in its entirety in the present edition. The first introduction, however, was written by Ford Maddox Ford, Hemingway’s former employer at the Transatlantic Review, in 1932 for the Modern Library Edition. Despite Hemingway’s nearly pathological dislike for Ford made explicit in A Moveable Feast, Ford heaps praise on the novel, describing his excitement as he began reading the first sentence. What amazed Ford was the power of the writing:

Hemingway’s words strike you, each one, as if they were pebbles fetched fresh from a brook. They live and shine, each in its place. So one of his pages has the effect of a brook-bottom into which you look down through the flowing water. The words form a tessellation, each in order beside the other. It is a very great quality.

As Ford observed, the novel is a masterpiece of literary craftsmanship. It achieves what only great art can do—it brings the reader into the experience. Ernest Hemingway aimed to write so well that the story almost becomes a remembered experience for the reader. A study of the manuscripts makes it clear that the author worked incredibly hard at his craft. This new Hemingway Library Edition enables the reader to dig deeper into the author’s creative process, to understand how Hemingway achieved his art with the inclusion of early drafts and the lists of titles that Hemingway considered for his novel.

In his 1948 introduction, Hemingway explains how he wrote the book in many different places over the course of two years and that he paced himself differently from when he was writing The Sun Also Rises. Each day he reread the book from the beginning to the point where he went on writing, and each day he stopped when he still knew what would happen next. He also typically rewrote as he went along. The more than six-hundred-and-fifty-page original handwritten manuscript is remarkably clean, without many revisions. Certain key passages, however, such as the opening lines of the novel (Figure 1) or when Frederic Henry is wounded (Figures 2–3), were revised extensively. Other passages, the most significant of which are included in the first appendix of this edition, were judiciously cut by Hemingway. His revisions were mostly a reductive process. As he once wryly observed, half of what he wrote was what he left out.

Many readers, even people who had been at the retreat from Caporetto, assumed that Hemingway based his account on his own experience there since his description is so realistic. In fact, Hemingway did not come to Italy until long after the retreat in June 1918. Furthermore, he had never visited that particular part of Italy. He later wrote:

In Italy when I was at the war there, for one thing that I had seen or that had happened to me, I knew many hundreds of things that had happened to other people who had been in the war in all of its phases. My own small experiences gave me a touchstone by which I could tell whether stories were true or false and being wounded was a password.3

It is certainly true that some of the experiences related in the novel were drawn in part from Hemingway’s own experiences. Hemingway was wounded while he was an ambulance driver at the Italian front in 1918. He met and fell in love with an American nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky at the hospital in Milan.4 The earliest extant draft of the book, included here in the first appendix, begins with a version of chapters 13 and 14 suggesting that Hemingway originally may have thought to begin the novel with the scene when he arrives at the hospital in Milan.5 In the early draft, the protagonist’s name is Emmett Hancock (E.H.) and Catherine Barkley is not yet present. Originally, he began with a scene that draws heavily from his own experience. When I was growing up, my parents always told me that my grandfather said write about what you know.

During the time Hemingway was writing the book, his second wife, Pauline, my grandmother, had a difficult pregnancy and delivery. In fact, my uncle Patrick’s birth inspired the writing of the final chapter, although of course, the outcome of his birth was different from that of the baby in the novel. The author’s own experiences were only partial inspiration for the novel. Hemingway once wrote:

A writer’s job is to tell the truth. His standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be. For facts can be observed badly; but when a good writer is creating something, he has time and scope to make an absolute truth.6

Michael Reynolds has shown that Hemingway did extensive research to make his accounts of the war in A Farewell to Arms historically accurate by including a range of precise topographical and meteorological descriptions.7 He also looked to literature for inspiration. To point out just one example, the passage where Frederic Henry jumps into the river was inspired in part by a similar scene in Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, as Linda Wagner-Martin has astutely observed.8 Hemingway was happier than he had ever been when he was writing A Farewell to Arms. In his own words, he was living in the book and making up what happened in it every day. Making the country and the people and the things that happened. Having just completed my own first novel, I understand something of that elation. There is no more satisfying feeling in the world than being able to create a story, living in it as you write it, and rereading it to see that you got it right.9

Nowhere, however, is Hemingway’s creative process more evident than in the ending of A Farewell to Arms. In an interview for the Paris Review in 1958 Hemingway told George Plimpton that he rewrote the ending thirty-nine times to get the words right.10 The numerous manuscript drafts preserved at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston more or less support Hemingway’s statement. When the Hemingway Room opened in 1979, it made available to the public nearly all of my grandfather’s extant manuscripts as part of the National Archives. Since then, a favorite exercise of high school groups visiting the collection has been to see the many draft endings that Hemingway wrote for A Farewell to Arms. With the present volume, readers can have a similarly exhilarating experience since all of the alternative endings are published here for the first time.

Depending on your definition of ending, since some of the drafts are just fragments, there are as many as forty-seven different attempts at the ending. The original manuscript draft endings were not preserved in any meaningful order, but here they are organized by theme and in a general progression toward the final ending arrived at by the author.11 Hemingway considered many different possible endings, which have been grouped under nine headings in the second appendix.12 There is an existential ending titled here The Nada Ending, after the Spanish word for nothing (Figure 5). It can be summed up in the statement: That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you. There are also a few halfhearted fragments that look to God and religion for a meaningful ending and these are grouped under the heading The Religious Ending. Hemingway also considered an ending in which the baby lives (Figure 6), but eventually abandoned this idea. He felt that such an ending really ought to be the beginning of a story, since birth, in his words, is the only beginning.

In The Funeral Ending, by contrast, Hemingway writes about the dreary realities of dealing with a person’s physical remains after death, but in writing this he sees that it is not what matters. The Morning-After Ending focuses on Frederic Henry’s waking the next morning still in a state of shock, and then realizing that Catherine and the baby are dead. The drafts included in the appendix are fascinating documents that show how Hemingway developed this scene through a process of continuous revision. This poignant passage and the dismissal of the funeral ending are incorporated into "The Original Basis for the Scribner’s Magazine Ending," whose final version was the first published ending that Hemingway wrote for the book (Figure 7). The decision to serialize the novel had been made long before Hemingway finished writing it. As he continued to work at achieving the right ending, he thought that having a different version in the magazine would increase interest in the book.13

Hemingway sent a copy of the manuscript with the Scribner’s Magazine ending to F. Scott Fitzgerald for his comments. He had looked to Fitzgerald for advice when he was writing The Sun Also Rises, but with A Farewell to Arms he did not want to consult his friend and early mentor until the book was nearly complete. Fitzgerald replied with numerous pages of handwritten comments, now preserved in the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library.14 He praised the novel but, at the same time, offered serious criticism, even fearing that their friendship might not survive his comments. Fitzgerald suggested many cuts. In particular, he believed Catherine to be too glib in comparison to Frederic. Most notably, he suggested a gentle ending for the book using the passage (Figure 4), the world breaks everyone . . . , which he considered to be one of the finest ever written in the English language. Hemingway clearly took Fitzgerald’s suggestions seriously and attempted an ending based on this passage, which is here called The Fitzgerald Ending. However, he decided against it, trusting his own instincts instead. At the end of Fitzgerald’s notes, where he comments what a fine book he thinks it is, Hemingway scribbled: Kiss my ass. EH.

Numerous drafts of "The Ending" document how hard Hemingway worked at getting the words just right (Figure 8). Taken together with the many other versions, the last page of A Farewell to Arms is perhaps the finest example of his iceberg principle. He reduces the story to its essence but maintains all of the emotional effect that is spelled out in the many different previous versions. The reader feels Frederic Henry’s pain and utter sense of loss.

For Ernest Hemingway, giving a title to a book always came at the end after the writing was finished. He typically wrote out lists of possibilities, and he liked to say that the Bible was a great source for titles. The some forty titles that he considered for A Farewell to Arms are preserved in the Hemingway Collection and are included in the third appendix to this volume. It has been observed that many of them come from works in The Oxford Book of English Verse.15 The title that he settled on was taken from a sixteenth-century poem by George Peele of the same title about a knight’s transition from a warrior to a husband in peacetime.16 For young readers, a story about World War I might seem as antiquated as a story about a knight in the sixteenth century, but part of the wonder of reading A Farewell to Arms is being transported back to that time and place, and sharing in the experience of true love that knew both joy and utter despair.

Seán Hemingway

BOOK ONE

1

IN THE LATE SUMMER of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.

The plain was rich with crops; there were many orchards of fruit trees and beyond the plain the mountains were brown and bare. There was fighting in the mountains and at night we could see the flashes from the artillery. In the dark it was like summer lightning, but the nights were cool and there was not the feeling of a storm coming.

Sometimes in the dark we heard the troops marching under the window and guns going past pulled by motor-tractors. There was much traffic at night and many mules on the roads with boxes of ammunition on each side of their pack-saddles and gray motor trucks that carried men, and other trucks with loads covered with canvas that moved slower in the traffic. There were big guns too that passed in the day drawn by tractors, the long barrels of the guns covered with green branches and green leafy branches and vines laid over the tractors. To the north we could look across a valley and see a forest of chestnut trees and behind it another mountain on this side of the river. There was fighting for that mountain too, but it was not successful, and in the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain. The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with the autumn. There were mists over the river and clouds on the mountain and the trucks splashed mud on the road and the troops were muddy and wet in their capes; their rifles were wet and under their capes the two leather cartridge-boxes on the front of the belts, gray leather boxes heavy with the packs of clips of thin, long 6.5 mm. cartridges, bulged forward under the capes so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they were six months gone with child.

There were small gray motor cars that passed going very fast; usually there was an officer on the seat with the driver and more officers in the back seat. They splashed more mud than the camions even and if one of the officers in the back was very small and sitting between two generals, he himself so small that you could not see his face but only the top of his cap and his narrow back, and if the car went especially fast it was probably the King. He lived in Udine and came out in this way nearly every day to see how things were going, and things went very badly.

At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army.

2

THE NEXT YEAR there were many victories. The mountain that was beyond the valley and the hillside where the chestnut forest grew was captured and there were victories beyond the plain on the plateau to the south and we crossed the river in August and lived in a house in Gorizia that had a fountain and many thick shady trees in a walled garden and a wistaria vine purple on the side of the house. Now the fighting was in the next mountains beyond and was not a mile away. The town was very nice and our house was very fine. The river ran behind us and the town had been captured very handsomely but the mountains beyond it could not be taken and I was very glad the Austrians seemed to want to come back to the town some time, if the war should end, because they did not bombard it to destroy it but only a little in a military way. People lived on in it and there were hospitals and cafés and artillery up side streets and two bawdy houses, one for troops and one for officers, and with the end of the summer, the cool nights, the fighting in the mountains beyond the town, the shell-marked iron of the railway bridge, the smashed tunnel by the river where the fighting had been, the trees around the square and the long avenue of trees that led to the square; these with there being girls in the town, the King passing in his motor car, sometimes now seeing his face and little long necked body and gray beard like a goat’s chin tuft; all these with the sudden interiors of houses that had lost a wall through shelling, with plaster and rubble in their gardens and sometimes in the street, and the whole thing going well on the Carso made the fall very different from the last fall when we had been in the country. The war was changed too.

The forest of oak trees on the mountain beyond the town was gone. The forest had been green in the summer when we had come into the town but now there were the stumps and the broken trunks and the ground torn up, and one day at the end of the fall when I was out where the oak forest had been I saw a cloud coming over the mountain. It came very fast and the sun went a dull yellow and then everything was gray and the sky was covered and the cloud came on down the mountain and suddenly we were in it and it was snow. The snow slanted across the wind, the bare ground was covered, the stumps of trees projected, there was snow on the guns and there were paths in the snow going back to the latrines behind trenches.

Later, below in the town, I watched the snow falling, looking out of the window of the bawdy house, the house for officers, where I sat with a friend and two glasses drinking a bottle of Asti, and, looking out at the snow falling slowly and heavily, we knew it was all over for that year. Up the river the mountains had not been taken; none of the mountains beyond the river had been taken. That was all left for next year. My friend saw the priest from our mess going by in the street, walking carefully in the slush, and pounded on the window to attract his attention. The priest looked up. He saw us and smiled. My friend motioned for him to come in. The priest shook his head and went on. That night in the mess after the spaghetti course, which every one ate very quickly and seriously, lifting the spaghetti on the fork until the loose strands hung clear then lowering it into the mouth, or else using a continuous lift and sucking into the mouth, helping ourselves to wine from the grass-covered gallon flask; it swung in a metal cradle and you pulled the neck of the flask down with the forefinger and the wine, clear red, tannic and lovely, poured out into the glass held with the same hand; after this course, the captain commenced picking on the priest.

The priest was young and blushed easily and wore a uniform like the rest of us but with a cross in dark red velvet above the left breast pocket of his gray tunic. The captain spoke pidgin Italian for my doubtful benefit, in order that I might understand perfectly, that nothing should be lost.

Priest to-day with girls, the captain said looking at the priest and at me. The priest smiled and blushed and shook his head. This captain baited him often.

Not true? asked the captain. To-day I see priest with girls.

No, said the priest. The other officers were amused at the baiting.

Priest not with girls, went on the captain. Priest never with girls, he explained to me. He took my glass and filled it, looking at my eyes all the time, but not losing sight of the priest.

Priest every night five against one. Every one at the table laughed. You understand? Priest every night five against one. He made a gesture and laughed loudly. The priest accepted it as a joke.

The Pope wants the Austrians to win the war, the major said. He loves Franz Joseph. That’s where the money comes from. I am an atheist.

Did you ever read the ‘Black Pig’? asked the lieutenant. I will get you a copy. It was that which shook my faith.

It is a filthy and vile book, said the priest. You do not really like it.

It is very valuable, said the lieutenant. It tells you about those priests. You will like it, he said to me. I smiled at the priest and he smiled back across the candle-light. Don’t you read it, he said.

I will get it for you, said the lieutenant.

All thinking men are atheists, the major said. I do not believe in the Free Masons however.

I believe in the Free Masons, the lieutenant said. It is a noble organization. Some one came in and as the door opened I could see the snow falling.

There will be no more offensive now that the snow has come, I said.

Certainly not, said the major. You should go on leave. You should go to Rome, Naples, Sicily——

He should visit Amalfi, said the lieutenant. I will write you cards to my family in Amalfi. They will love you like a son.

He should go to Palermo.

He ought to go to Capri.

I would like you to see Abruzzi and visit my family at Capracotta, said the priest.

Listen to him talk about the Abruzzi. There’s more snow there than here. He doesn’t want to see peasants. Let him go to centres of culture and civilization.

He should have fine girls. I will give you the addresses of places in Naples. Beautiful young girls—accompanied by their mothers. Ha! Ha! Ha! The captain spread his hand open, the thumb up and fingers outspread as when you make shadow pictures. There was a shadow from his hand on the wall. He spoke again in pidgin Italian. You go away like this, he pointed to the thumb, and come back like this, he touched the little finger. Every one laughed.

Look, said the captain. He spread the hand again. Again the candle-light made its shadows on the wall. He started with the upright thumb and named in their order the thumb and four fingers, soto-tenente (the thumb), tenente (first finger), capitano (next finger), maggiore (next to the little finger), and tenente-colonello (the little finger). You go away soto-tenente! You come back sotocolonello! They all laughed. The captain was having a great success with finger games. He looked at the priest and shouted, Every night priest five against one! They all laughed again.

You must go on leave at once, the major said.

I would like to go with you and show you things, the lieutenant said.

When you come back bring a phonograph.

Bring good opera disks.

Bring Caruso.

Don’t bring Caruso. He bellows.

Don’t you wish you could bellow like him?

He bellows. I say he bellows!

I would like you to go to Abruzzi, the priest said. The others were shouting. There is good hunting. You would like the people and though it is cold it is clear and dry. You could stay with my family. My father is a famous hunter.

Come on, said the captain. We go whorehouse before it shuts.

Good-night, I said to the priest.

Good-night, he said.

3

WHEN I CAME BACK to the front we still lived in that town. There were many more guns in the country around and the spring had come. The fields were green and there were small green shoots on the vines, the trees along the road had small leaves and a breeze came from the sea. I saw the town with the hill and the old castle above it in a cup in the hills with the mountains beyond, brown mountains with a little green on their slopes. In the town there were more guns, there were some new hospitals, you met British men and sometimes women, on the street, and a few more houses had been hit by shell fire. It was warm and like the spring and I walked down the alleyway of trees, warmed from the sun on the wall, and found we still lived in the same house and that it all looked the same as when I had left it. The door was open, there was a soldier sitting on a bench outside in the sun, an ambulance was waiting by the side door and inside the door, as I went in, there was the smell of marble floors and hospital. It was all as I had left it except that now it was spring. I looked in the door of the big room and saw the major sitting at his desk, the window open and the sunlight coming into the room. He did not see me and I did not know whether to go in and report or go upstairs first and clean up. I decided to go on upstairs.

The room I shared with the lieutenant Rinaldi looked out on the courtyard. The window was open, my bed was made up with blankets and my things hung on the wall, the gas mask in an oblong tin can, the steel helmet on the same peg. At the foot of the bed was my flat trunk, and my winter boots, the leather shiny with oil, were on the trunk. My Austrian sniper’s rifle with its blued octagon barrel and the lovely dark walnut, cheek-fitted, schutzen stock, hung over the two beds. The telescope that fitted it was, I remembered, locked in the trunk. The lieutenant, Rinaldi, lay asleep on the other bed. He woke when he heard me in the room and sat up.

Ciaou! he said. What kind of time did you have?

Magnificent.

We shook hands and he put his arm around my neck and kissed me.

Oughf, I said.

You’re dirty, he said. You ought to wash. Where did you go and what did you do? Tell me everything at once.

I went everywhere. Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples, Villa San Giovanni, Messina, Taormina——

You talk like a time-table. Did you have any beautiful adventures?

Yes.

Where?

Milano, Firenze, Roma, Napoli——

That’s enough. Tell me really what was the best.

In Milano.

That was because it was first. Where did you meet her? In the Cova? Where did you go? How did you feel? Tell me everything at once. Did you stay all night?

Yes.

That’s nothing. Here now we have beautiful girls. New girls never been to the front before.

Wonderful.

You don’t believe me? We will go now this afternoon and see. And in the town we have beautiful English girls. I am now in love with Miss Barkley. I will take you to call. I will probably marry Miss Barkley.

I have to get washed and report. Doesn’t anybody work now?

Since you are gone we have nothing but frostbites, chilblains, jaundice, gonorrhea, self-inflicted wounds, pneumonia and hard and soft chancres. Every week some one gets wounded by rock fragments. There are a few real wounded. Next week the war starts again. Perhaps it start again. They say so. Do you think I would do right to marry Miss Barkley—after the war of course?

Absolutely, I said and poured the basin full of water.

To-night you will tell me everything, said Rinaldi. Now I must go back to sleep to be fresh and beautiful for Miss Barkley.

I took off my tunic and shirt and washed in the cold water in the basin. While I rubbed myself with a towel I looked around the room and out the window and at Rinaldi lying with his eyes closed on the bed. He was good-looking, was my age, and he came from Amalfi. He loved being a surgeon and we were great friends. While I was looking at him he opened his eyes.

Have you any money?

Yes.

Loan me fifty lire.

I dried my hands and took out my pocket-book from the inside of my tunic hanging on the wall. Rinaldi took the note, folded it without rising from the bed and slid it in his breeches pocket. He smiled, I must make on Miss Barkley the impression of a man of sufficient wealth. You are my great and good friend and financial protector.

Go to hell, I said.

That night at the mess I sat next to the priest and he was disappointed and suddenly hurt that I had not gone to the Abruzzi. He had written to his father that I was coming and they had made preparations. I myself felt as badly as he did and could not understand why I had not gone. It was what I had wanted to do and I tried to explain how one thing had led to another and finally he saw it and understood that I had really wanted to go and it was almost all right. I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.

We two were talking while the others argued. I had wanted to go to Abruzzi. I had gone to no place where the roads were frozen and

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