It Tolls for Thee

Now that I've finished Hemingway's longest novel, I find myself wondering whether it would have been a different sort of book if it had been written in 1936 and 1937, instead of after the Loyalist effort had failed.  While there is a certain amount of idealism, even good humor, the foreshadowing of disaster both personal and political is difficult to avoid.  "But remember this that as long as we can hold them here we keep the fascists tied up.  They can't attack any other country until they finish with us and they can never finish with us.  If the French help at all, if only they leave the frontier open and if we get planes from America they can never finish with us.  Never, if we get anything at all." (p. 432)

Of course, by the time he wrote those words Hemingway was perfectly well aware that fascist sympathizers in France had prevailed upon the Blum government to close the frontier, and that FDR had found it politically expedient not to send planes to fly side by side with communist pilots.  With troglodytes like Andre Marty purifying the International Brigades and the NKVD performing a similar disservice among the anarchists, the CNT, and POUM, it's no wonder Franco won.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

As I am two-thirds of the way through this classic, I wonder whether anyone reads it anymore.  After all, Hemingway writes as an apologist for the Stalinist communists, at the expense of the P.O.U.M. anarcho-syndicalists.  There is a fascinating comment on Palin and Huckabee on page 207 of the original 1940 edition: 

     "But surely the big proprietors and the rich will make a revolution against such taxes.  Such taxes appear to me to be revolutionary. They will revolt against the government when they see that they are threatened, exactly as the fascists have done here," Primitivo said.
     "It is possible."
     "Then you will have to fight in your country as we fight here."
     "Yes, we will have to fight."
     " But are there not many fascists in your country?"
     "There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes."