They fought in the dark in the rain.
They (the wounded) were wet to the skin and all were scared.
… it was raining again (170).
Дождь пронизывает все: солдаты атакуют вражеские линии под дождем, испуганные раненые — под дождем, бомбардировка — под дождем. Дождь начинается вновь и вновь. Постоянным рефреном звучит предложное сочетание in the rain и предложения типа It was starting to rain, It was still raining, It was raining outside. Показательно в этом отношении начало двадцать восьмой главы, первый абзац которой характеризуется периодичным употреблением адвербиальной конструкции in the rain. «Дождь» становится отдельным героем романа, образ дождя как предвестник несчастья вездесущ: в абзаце через каждые семь-восемь строк ощущается его присутствие:
As we moved out through the town it was empty in the rain…
We moved slowly but steadily in the rain…
I could see the stalled column between the trees in the rain…
It was still raining… (177).
Среди разнообразных предложных конструкций, используемых автором, in the rain занимает главенствующее место, но есть много и других предлогов, конструкции с которыми подтверждают мысль о том, что от дождя-несчастья никуда не скрыться.
On some carts the women sat huddled from the rain… (180).
It would be a black night with the rain (196).
It is a low level country and under the rain it is even flatter (204).
…his shoulders up against the rain (148).
Действительно, для Фредерика наступают черные дни. Ему едва удалось избежать расстрела при отступлении армии, когда в каждом отступавшем видели предателя:
We stood in the rain and were taken out one at a time to be questioned and shot (202).
Помимо адвербиальных сочетаний (модель prep + rain), воплощающих идею вездесущности дождя и, соответственно, несчастья и смерти, в романе имеется множество случаев предикатной сочетаемости существительного rain (модель rain + verb). Примечательно, что данную модель наполняют глаголы, обозначающие начало, конец и сам процесс действия — start, come, fall, slack, stop.
The rain had stopped and only came occasionally in gusts (236).
The rain stopped and the wind drove the clouds so that the moon shone through… (237).
…and a fine rain was falling (242).
The rain was not falling so heavily now (181).
Употребление существительного rain с глаголами способствуют персонификации дождя. Он, как живой, может начинаться и заканчиваться, может длиться вечно, он могуч в своей независимости от чужой воли.
Еще один распространенный тип синтаксической конструкции, употребляемый в романе, — предложения с безличным it (модель it + verb)
и вводным there — there was.
The sky was clouded over again and it was raining a little (189).
There was a fine November rain falling.
It rained for three days (266).
Они уступают по частоте употребления двум предыдущим моделям, но тоже способствуют укреплению идеи неотвратимости событий у читателя, или слабости человека, его зависимости от природных явлений
и глобальных событий, каковым является война.
Итак, наиболее неотвратимо тема дождя звучит на страницах, описывающих возвращение Фредерика на войну и его бегство с фронта. Фредерик встречается с Кэтрин, но в Италии им обоим грозит беда, они бегут ненастной осенней ночью в нейтральную Швейцарию. Там они чувствуют себя в безопасности, живут несколько месяцев спокойной счастливой жизнью, только читая о войне в газетах, но не переставая ощущать, что им осталось недолго быть вместе, тем более, что дождь возвращается на страницы романа и предвещает недоброе: In the night it started raining. It rained on all morning and turned the snow to slush and made the mountain-side dismal (265). When there was a good day we had a splendid time and we never had a bad time. We knew the baby was very close now and it gave us both a feeling as though something were hurrying us and we could not lose any time together (269). И вот это страшное случается на фоне дождя — во время родов Кэтрин умирает. Происходит то, чего она так боялась, против чего Генри был бессилен, и именно тогда, когда идет дождь.
I could see nothing but the dark and the rain falling across the light from the window. So that was it. The baby was dead (282).
I walked through the rain up to the hospital (284).
After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain (286).
На последних страницах романа дождь упоминается автором как бы вскользь — всего три раза, да это и не нужно, ведь предчувствие у читателя уже создано путем многократного, ритмичного повторения одних
и тех же ассоциаций, и слово rain давно стало метафорой беды и смерти.
Проведенный в данной статье анализ ритмичного употребления лексико-грамматических средств, используемых Эрнестом Хэмингуэем
в романе «Прощай, оружие!», показывает индивидуальную технику автора, его творческий метод при создании определенной темы в художественном произведении, будь то короткий рассказ или большой роман.
A friend of long standing who has never asked me to devote this space to advertising any enthusiasm of his has now, diffidently, made the exception. He does not want to do anything less than what he can do, through his own efforts and those of his friends, to pass along the word that, within walking distance of the great majority of Americans, there is help waiting which can lead them out of the darkness, as indisputably as an eye surgeon, restoring sight, can lead someone into the sunlight.
Kenneth (we’ll call him) is a cocky feller, something of a sport, tough-talking, an ace in his individualistic profession, who remembers getting drunk at college in the late ‘20’s on the night he won an important boxing match, but at no other time during his college career. Emerging from college into the professional world, he revved up slowly, hitting in his late 30’s his cruising speed: two or three martinis per day. These he was dearly attached to, but not apparently dominated by: He would not, gladly, go a day without his martinis, but neither, after the third, did he require a fourth.
Then in the spring of 1972 his gentle, devoted (teetotaling) wife had a mastectomy, the prognosis optimistic; but with a shade of uncertainty. So, to beef up his morale, he increased the dosage just a little. When, later that year, the doctor called to tell him the worst, he walked straightaway to the nearest bar. After she died, he began buying a fifth each of bourbon and gin on Saturdays, a week’s supply to eke out the several martinis he had been drinking at and after lunch. Fascinated, he watched himself casually making minor alterations: «Make that quarts» was the modest beginning. Then the resupplying would come on Friday; then Thursday. In due course it was a quart a day.
In the morning he would begin; one, then up to five snorts before leaving for the office — later and later in the morning. Before reaching the door he would rinse out his mouth. But always — this fascinated him, as gradually he comprehended the totality of his servitude — he would, on turning the door handle, go back: for just one more.
At night he would prepare himself dinner, then lie down for a little nap, wake hours later, go to the kitchen to eat dinner — only to find he had already eaten it. Once he returned to a restaurant three hours after having eaten his dinner: he forgot he had been there. Blackouts, he called the experiences.
On the crucial day it was nothing special. He walked home from the office, full of gin, and vomited in the street (this often happened), struggling to do this with aplomb in the posh backdrop of the East 60’s. On reaching his apartment he lurched gratefully for the bottle, sipped from the glass... and was clapped by the hand of Providence as unmistakably as any piece of breast was ever struck by a lance.
He heard his own voice say, as if directed by an outside force, «What the hell am I doing to myself?» He poured his martini into the sink, emptied the gin bottle, then emptied the bourbon bottle, then went to the telephone and, never in his life having given a second’s conscious thought to the organization, fumbled through the directory and dialed the number for Alcoholics Anonymous.
One must suppose that whoever answered that telephone call was as surprised as a fireman excitedly advised that a house was ablaze. Kenneth would like to... inquire — but perhaps A A was too busy tonight, perhaps next week sometime?... What? Come today? How about tomorrow? Do you have a meeting every week? You have 800 meetings in New York a week?.. Scores every night?... Okay. Tomorrow.
Tomorrow would be the first of 250 meetings in ninety days with Alcoholics Anonymous. AA advises at least ninety meetings in the first ninety days. Kenneth had assumed he would be mixing with hoi polloi. Always objective, he advises now that «on a scale of 1—10» — incorporating intelligence, education, success, articulateness — «I would rank around six or seven». He made friends. And he made instant progress during those first weeks, quickly losing the compulsion for the morning drinks. But for the late afternoon martinis he thirsted, and he hungered, and he lusted. He dove into a despair mitigated only by his thrice-daily contacts with AA. His banked-up grief for his wife raged now, and every moment, every long afternoon and evening without her, and without alcohol, were endless bouts with the haunting question: What is the point in living at all?
And then, suddenly, as suddenly as on the day he poured the booze into the sink. Twenty-seven weeks later, he had been inveigled into going to a party. Intending to stay one dutiful hour, he stayed five. On returning, he was exhilarated. He had developed anew the capacity to talk with people, other than in the prescribed ritualisms of his profession, or in the boozy idiom of the tippler. He was so excited, so pleased, so elated, he could not sleep until early morning for pleasure at re-experiencing life.
That was two months ago, and every day he rejoiced at his liberation, and prays that others who suffer will find the hand of Alcoholics Anonymous. And — one might presumptuously add — the hand of the Prime Mover, Who was there in that little kitchen on the day the impulse came to him; and Who, surely, is the wellspring of the faith of Alcoholics Anonymous, as of so many other spirits united to help their fellow man.
Ambition is one of those Rorschach words: define it and you instantly reveal a great deal about yourself. Even that most neutral of works, Webster’s, in its Seventh New Collegiate Edition, gives itself away, defining ambition first and foremost as «an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power». Ardent immediately assumes a heat incommensurate with good sense and stability, and rank, fame, and power have come under fairly heavy attack for at least a century. One can, after all, be ambitious for the public good, for the alleviation of suffering, for the enlightenment of mankind, though there are some who say that these are precisely the ambitious people most to be distrusted.
Surely ambition is behind dreams of glory, of wealth, of love, of distinction, of accomplishment, of pleasure, of goodness. What life does with our dreams and expectations cannot, of course, be predicted. Some dreams, begun in selflessness, end in rancor; other dreams, begun in selfishness, end in large-heartedness. The unpredictability of the outcome of dreams is no reason to cease dreaming.
To be sure, ambition, the sheer thing unalloyed by some larger purpose than merely clambering up, is never a pretty prospect to ponder. As drunks have done to alcohol, the single-minded have done to ambition — given it a bad name. Like a taste for alcohol, too, ambition does not always allow for easy satiation. Some people cannot handle it; it has brought grief to others, and not merely the ambitious alone. Still, none of this seems sufficient cause for driving ambition under the counter.
What is the worst that can be said — that has been said — about ambition? Here is a (surely) partial list:
To begin with, it, ambition, is often antisocial, and indeed is now out-moded, belonging to an age when individualism was more valued and useful than it is today. The person strongly imbued with ambition ignores the collectivity; socially detached, he is on his own and out for his own. Individuality and ambition are firmly linked. The ambitious individual, far from identifying himself and his fortunes with the group, wishes to rise above it. The ambitious man or woman sees the world as a battle; rivalrousness is his or her principal emotion: the world has limited prizes to offer, and he or she is determined to get his or hers. Ambition is, moreover, Jesuitical; it can argue those possessed by it into believing that what they want for themselves is good for everyone — that the satisfaction of their own desires is best for the commonweal. The truly ambitious believe that it is a dog-eat-dog world, and they are distinguished by wanting to be the dogs that do the eating.
From here it is but a short hop to believe that those who have achieved the common goals of ambition — money, fame, power — have achieved them through corruption of a greater or lesser degree, mostly a greater. Thus all politicians in high places, thought to be ambitious, are understood to be, ipso facto, without moral scruples. How could they have such scruples — a weighty burden in a high climb — and still have risen as they have?
If ambition is to be well regarded, the rewards of ambition — wealth, distinction, control over one’s destiny — must be deemed worthy of the sacrifices made on ambition’s behalf. If the tradition of ambition is to have vitality, it must be widely shared; and it especially must be esteemed by people who are themselves admired, the educated not least among them. The educated not least because, nowadays more than ever before, it is they who have usurped the platforms of public discussion and wield the power of the spoken and written word in newspapers, in magazines, on television. In an odd way, it is the educated who have claimed to have given up on ambition as an ideal. What is odd is that they have perhaps most benefited from ambition — if not always their own then that of their parents and grandparents. There is a heavy note of hypocrisy in this; a case of closing the barn door after the horses have escaped — with me educated themselves astride them.