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- Herausgeber: Stargatebook
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
It is the story of love and war that Hemingway had always contemplated writing, inspired by his experiences in 1918 on the Italian front, and in particular his wounding at Fossalta and his passion for nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. The themes of war, love and death, which in many ways underlie all of Hemingway's work, find a particular space and articulation in this novel. It is the story itself that stimulates emotions and feelings connected to the enchantments, but also to the extreme precariousness of existence, to revolt against violence and unjustly shed blood. The desertion of the young American officer during the retreat of Caporetto is revealed, with the reunion between the protagonist and the woman with whom he is in love, to be a decisive condemnation of what is inhuman about war. But even love, in this story marked by a tragic defeat of happiness, remains an aspiration that the man desperately pursues, a prisoner of mysterious forces against which it seems useless to struggle.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Ernest Hemingway
FAREWELL TO ARMS
Edition 2025 by Stargatebook
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
BOOK FIRST
BOOK SECOND
BOOK THIRD
BOOK FOURTH
BOOK FIFTH
BOOK FIRST
1.
Toward the end of that summer, we lived in a village where across the river and the plain we could see the mountains. In the riverbed pebbles and gravel were dry and white in the sun, and the water ran clear and blue in the canals. They passed troops by the house and continued along the road, their dust covering the leaves of the trees. Even the trunks were covered with dust, and the leaves fell early that year; we saw troops marching along the road raising clouds of dust and falling leaves stirred by the wind as the soldiers passed, and then the road bare and white where there were no leaves.
The plain was still rich in crops, had many orchards, and at the bottom rose the barren brown mountains. There was fighting up there. At night we could glimpse the flashes of cannons. They looked like flashes of heat in the dark, but they were cool nights: there was no sense of an approaching storm.
Sometimes, at night, we would hear marching under the window, and passing cannons dragged by tractors. There was always traffic at night, mules along the roads with crates of ammunition balanced on either side of the stick, and gray trucks carrying soldiers and other trucks loaded with equipment, covered with awnings, more slowly wading through the traffic. And big guns passed by day, towed by tractors, the long canes intertwined with green branches as vine shoots covered the tractors. Northward a forest of chestnut trees appeared at the bottom of a valley, and then up another mountain, this side of the river. They fought for it too for a long time but to no avail; in autumn, when the rains began, the leaves fell from the chestnut trees and the branches remained bare, black the trunks of the chestnut trees inside the rain. The vines were stripped bare and the whole country was barren, damp and dead in autumn. Banks of fog stood on the river and clouds on the mountains, and trucks splashed mud on the roads. Muddy and wet passed the troops inside their coats, wet their rifles with rain, and from under the coats sprouted on the front the leather, gray gauntlets full of magazine packs with their long, thin, 6.5-millimeter cartridges; they bulged out and the men marched as if they were six months pregnant. Small gray cars sped past, an officer usually sitting next to the driver and others behind. They splashed even worse than the trucks, and if one of the officers in the back was tiny, sitting between two generals, so small that you couldn't even see his face but only the tip of his cap, and if the car sped by even faster, it was probably the king. He lived in Udine and almost every day he wanted to see how things were going, which were in truth very bad.
At the beginning of winter it never stopped raining. Cholera came. But they managed to tame it, and no more than seven thousand men finally died of it, in the whole army.
2.
The following year there were many victories. The mountain beyond the valley and the slopes with the chestnut forest were taken, and we also won across the plain on the plateau to the south. And in August, having crossed the river we settled in Gorizia, in a house with a fountain and a garden full of large, shady trees, enclosed by a wall, and banks of purple wisteria on the side of the house. Now not more than a mile away there was fighting in the mountains. Gorizia was a dear town, and very beautiful was the house where we lived. Behind it flowed the river. Gorizia was almost intact after the conquest, but the mountains in front of it could not be taken, and I was glad that the Austrians, thinking perhaps they were coming back, did not bomb the town to destroy it but only what little the war demanded. The population had remained and there were hospitals, cafes, artillery in the streets, and two barracks, one for soldiers the other for officers; and toward the end of the summer the cool nights and the fighting in the mountains on the other side of town, the iron of the railroad bridge scarred by shells and the ruined tunnel near the river where the fighting had taken place, the trees around the square and the long tree-lined avenue leading to it, and the girls in the streets and the king's rides in his automobile (now, sometimes, one could see his face and small body, his long neck with a gray stubble resembling a goat's lace), all this and the sudden spectacle of houses showing their intestines after an artillery shot, with rubble and debris in the gardens and streets, and the good situation on the Karst, belonged to a very different autumn than when one lived in the village. The war had also changed.
It had disappeared, on the mountain opposite, the oak forest.
We had found it green in the summer as we entered the city, but all that remained were stumps and broken logs and disrupted ground. And one day, late in the fall, passing where the forest was I saw a big cloud advancing over the mountain. It was advancing fast and the sun became gloomy and then everything became gray, the sky remained closed by that cloud; it still advanced descending on the mountain, and suddenly we were in it and it was snow. It came down sideways in the wind, and the ground was covered with it, only the broken logs protruded; snow piled up on the guns, tracks in the snow now led to the toilets behind the trenches.
Later, in the city, I saw snow falling past the windows of the officers' mess, where I was with a friend over a bottle of Asti. And watching as it came down slow and heavy, I knew that everything was over for that year. The mountains along the river had not been taken, no mountains across the river had been taken, all that remained for the next year. And my comrade caught sight of the chaplain who was coming with us to the mess, passing down the road walking cautiously through the slush. He tapped on the glass to call him, and the chaplain looked up and smiled. My comrade motioned for him to come up, but he shook his head and continued on.
At the cafeteria that evening, after the spaghetti we ate quickly and quietly, twisting them on the fork until they gathered limply and we could thus plunge them into our mouths or even let them dangle gently sucking them in, meanwhile pouring us wine from the large flask suspended in its metal flask holder (with his index finger he lowered his neck and the wine of a clear, dark and lovable red dripped into the glass held by the same hand)-after the spaghetti, therefore, the captain began to mock the chaplain.
The chaplain was young and blushed easily. He wore a uniform similar to ours, with a red velvet cross on the gray-green breast pocket. Out of a delicate regard for me, the captain spoke in Negro Italian; he wanted me not to miss a word, to my great advantage.
Other officers were having fun.
said the major. - He has a passion for Franz Joseph; that's where he gets his dough from. But fortunately I am an atheist. -
I smiled at the chaplain, and he smiled back at me through the candle.
He should go to Rome. And then Naples, Sicily... -
3.
When I returned to the front I found Gorizia again, there were many more guns in the countryside, and spring had come. The fields were green and the first buds were sprouting on the vines, the trees along the road had put on a finger of leaves, and a little wind was coming from the sea. I saw the town approaching with its hill and old castle above, the other hills that crowned it, and the mountains behind, brown with a little green on the slopes. There were more guns in the town, too, and there were a few new hospitals, and I met some Englishmen and other houses had been hit by artillery, too. It was warm in a spring-like way; along the tree-lined avenue, the walls were warm with sunshine. I found that we still lived in the same house and everything was as before, identical to when I had left. The door was open and a soldier sat on a bench in the sunshine, and at the side entrance an ambulance stood stationary. As I entered I found the smell of the marble floor and hospital odor again, everything was as I had left it, except that now it was spring. I looked for the door to the large room, saw the major sitting at the table and the window open, with the sun coming into the room. The major hadn't noticed me, and I didn't know whether to introduce myself right away or go up and wash up, then I decided to go upstairs.
The room I shared with Lieutenant Rinaldi overlooked the courtyard. The window was open and my bunk looked done but there were only the blankets, and stuff of mine was hanging on the wall, the gas mask in its oblong tin box, the helmet. On the trunk stood my winter boots shiny with polish. The sniper carbine with its blued barrel and dark walnut dear-wood stock, well adjusted to the cheek, hung 11 long over the two cots. I remembered that I had put the scope in the trunk. Rinaldi was asleep lying on his bunk, and hearing me woke up, he sat up. - Hello - he said. - How did it go? -
He clapped his hands, put his arm around my neck and kissed me.
John, Messina, Taormina... -
After the war, do you understand? -
I took off my jacket and shirt and washed myself with the cold water from the basin, and, rubbing myself with the towel, I looked around the room and out the window, and Rinaldi lying there with his eyes closed. He was a handsome man, about my age, he was from Amalfi, and he liked being a surgeon. There was a lot of friendship between the two of us. As I looked at him he opened his eyes.
I wiped my hands and took my wallet from my jacket pocket, Rinaldi folded the note and, remaining lying down, slid it into his pants pocket. He smiled.
That evening at the cafeteria, I sat next to the chaplain, and he was a little offended because I had not been to Abruzzi. He had announced my visit to the parents, and they had made preparations. I was sorry too, I couldn't understand why I hadn't been to the Abruzzi, I had really wanted to, but I tried to explain that from one thing came another, and finally, he was persuaded, he understood that I wanted to go; the matter was settled or almost settled. I had drunk a lot of wine and then coffee and then witch and I was trying to explain, caught up now in the wine, how you can't do what you want to do: how you never succeeded. I kept talking to the chaplain while the others were arguing. I had really longed to see the Abruzzi; and I had not been instead over there where the roads are frozen and hard as iron and the cold is clear and dry, the snow as dry as dust, and hare tracks furrow the snow and the peasants taking off their hats call you lordship, and the hunting is excellent. I had not been through any of those countries but only through the smoke of the cafes and into nights that the room spins around you and you have to look at the wall for it to stop, nights lost still in drunkenness, in bed, when you feel that there is nothing but what you see and the strange excitement in waking up, not knowing who you are with, and the world remains unreal, in darkness, and you are excited so much that you have to make yourself dark again, lost still in the night: only convinced that this is everything, everything, really everything, and that it doesn't matter so much. But suddenly you still care a great deal, and then you sleep and can wake up in the morning with the same thought, inside what had been and vanished and comes back so sharp, sour or clear - and sometimes, you think again how dear the bill was. Sometimes cheerful still, sunk in contentment and warm with it, until breakfast and lunch, other times excluded, estranged from all cheerfulness and satisfied only to be able to go outdoors, outside, into the streets - but it is another day beginning and then another night.
I was trying to talk to the chaplain about the night and the difference between night and day and how the night is better except when the day is particularly cool and clear; but I couldn't express myself. So I can't now, but those who have experienced it know. The chaplain hadn't tried it, but he understood that I had really wanted to see the Abruzzi; and I hadn't gone there nevertheless, and the two of us were friends as before: with many tastes in common, but not quite the same between us. He had always known, he, what I did not know, and even after I learned it I remained ready to forget it; and I still did not know it then, I had to learn it later. Meanwhile everyone remained at the table. Dinner was over but the discussion continued. I had stopped talking to the chaplain. The captain said loudly:
4.
The next morning I was awakened by the drumming of the garden next door, saw the sun in the window and got up. I looked into the garden, the paths were damp and the grass wet with dew. The battery fired twice and each time the shot slammed the glass waving my pajamas on my chest. I could not see the cannons, but certainly the bullets passed just above us. It was a bore that the cannons were so close; fortunately it was not fortress artillery. As I stood at the window I heard a truck start up in the street; I got dressed, went down the stairs, had a sip of coffee in the kitchen and went to the garage. Ten cars stood in a line under the long canopy. They were box-roofed ambulances with beveled hoods, painted gray and looking like vans.
In the yard, mechanics were working around another car. The three that were missing were up in the mountains at the field hospitals. - Do they ever pull this battery on it? - I asked one of the mechanics. - No, Mr. Lieutenant, it is sheltered by the hill. -How is the work going? And everything else? - I asked.
He left work for a moment and smiled. - Has he been on leave? -
He cleaned his hands in the suit, grimaced. - Did it go well? - Even among the others I saw some grimacing.
I let them work. The ambulance looked like a carcass, so bare with that open engine and parts scattered on the bench; I went to look at the other cars. They were quite tidy, some freshly washed and the others dusty. I looked carefully at the tires, if there were any cuts or the stone-filled roads had mangled them. Everything looked fine. It was clear that I was not needed. I had believed that the operation of each car and all that could be achieved for them, the smooth running of the journeys with the wounded and sick in bringing them down from the mountains to the matriculation centers and then sorting them between the hospitals marked on their sheets, it had seemed to me that all of this depended, in large part, on me, but it was clear that it mattered little for me to be present.
I had come back all dusty and filthy and went upstairs to wash. Rinaldi was sitting on the bunk reading the Hugo's English Grammar. He had changed, put on his black boots and his hair was shining. - Oh bravo - he said. - Now it's off to Miss Barkley's. - No - I replied.
I washed, brushed my hair, and we made to leave.
He filled the glasses and we toasted with his little finger. The schnapps was very strong.
We drank. Rinaldi put the bottle away and all that was left was to leave. It was still hot, walking around town, but the sun was about to set and it felt good. The English hospital was set up in a large mansion that certain Germans had built just before the war. Miss Barkley was in the garden with another nurse, we caught sight of the white clothes in the trees. We approached, Rinaldi greeted, and I greeted too, with less effusion.
Rinaldi was conversing with the other nurse. They were laughing.
-
We sat on a bench. I looked at her.
I would have married him, just as I would have done anything else. I realize now, how it was; but he wanted to go to war, and I didn't understand enough then. - I didn't answer.
Rinaldi was still conversing with the other nurse.
Here we are close to the front, aren't we? -Very close. -
We approached the others.
I translated for Miss Ferguson.
After a while, we said good night and left. On the way home, Rinaldi said to me: - Miss Barkley prefers you to me, that's clear. But the Scotch girl is very pretty - .
5.
The next day in the afternoon I went by to look for Miss Barkley. She was not in the garden, and I entered the mansion through the back door where they stopped the ambulances. The principal told me that Miss Barkley was on duty. - There is war, do you know? -
I replied that I knew.
By that narrow road I had gone down to the river, left the car at the little hospital under the hill, and, crossing the pontoon bridge that remained protected by the mountain, I had followed the trenches inside the devastated town at the foot of the rise. Everyone was staying in the shelters. Long rows of flares were ready to warn the artillery, others to report faults in the telephone wires, and there was calm, heat and great dirt. Look at the Austrian trenches through the netting, no one could be seen. In a shelter I had a few drinks with a captain I knew, then went over the bridge again. They were finishing a new and very wide road that, having crossed the mountain, zigzagged down to the river. They were waiting for that road to begin the offensive. With dry hairpin bends it would come down through the forest. We would use the new road for the incoming material, while the empty trucks and carts, the ambulances with the wounded, all the returning traffic would take the old road.
The first little hospital was on the Austrian side, and the wounded would be carried on stretchers along the pontoon bridge. I saw that the Austrians could bombard with all comfort even the new road for the last mile: on the plain it was completely exposed. Here, too, a massacre could take place. But I found a place where the cars could take cover just past that area, until the wounded came this way from the bridge.
I would have gladly gone through the new road but it was not finished. It was wide and seemed well made, with a well-studied slope, and the curves looked good among the forest clearings on the mountainside. The ambulances would have descended beautifully, with their jaw brakes, and in any case they would not have been loaded downhill. I returned by the old road. Two carabinieri stopped me, a gunshot had come down the road, and while we waited three more came. 77 bullets. They came whistling and blowing, then a dry, bright burst, a blaze and gray smoke that covered the road. The carabinieri signaled to go again.
I avoided the holes where the bullets had fallen, and I smelled the explosion and the smell of scorched earth, of beaten stone. I arrived in Gorizia and passed by the house before going to look for Miss Barkley; but she was on duty. I hurriedly hurried my dinner and returned at once to the English hospital. The mansion was large and majestic, and there were beautiful trees in the park. Miss Barkley was sitting on a bench with Miss Ferguson.
They seemed very happy to see me; after a while Miss Ferguson said she was sorry she could not stay.
nurse. A V.A.D., on the other hand, is stuff done quickly. - I understand," I said.
We looked at each other, in the dark. I thought she was very beautiful and took her hand. She let go of it and I squeezed it into mine and put my arm around her waist.
He looked at me in the dark. I was irritated but confident, I could see everything that would happen next: like the moves in a chess game.
Shall we take care of something else? -
She laughed. It was the first time I had heard her laugh. I looked at her.
"To hell with it," I thought. I stroked her hair and pressed my hand on her shoulder. She was still crying.
After a while I accompanied her to the villa and we parted. I found Rinaldi lying on the bunk. He looked at me for a long time. - So you progress, with Miss Barkley? -
With my pillow, I gave a blow on the candle and crawled into bed in the dark, Rinaldi bent down to pick up the candle, relighted it and went back to reading.
6.
I stayed two days at the field hospitals. I returned too late in the evening to go to Miss Barkley's, and put it off until the next evening. In the garden she was not there, and I had to wait in the office. Several marble busts stood on their painted wooden pillars along the walls of the room. Even the entrance hall was adorned with busts; they were of the same marble and all looked alike. I had always thought the carved stuff a bit silly - bronzes, however, can make sense. But marble busts just taste like a graveyard. The Pisa cemetery is beautiful, though. Go to Genoa if you wish to see ugly marbles. A very rich German had built the villa, and the busts must have cost him who knows how much. I wondered who had made them and how much he might have earned. I was trying to guess whether they were family busts, or what; but they were all uniformly classical and you couldn't tell.
I had taken my seat without taking off my cap. Even in Gorizia we should have worn the helmet, but it was inconvenient and too theatrical in a town where civilians still lived. I wore it when I went to the front, equipped with my British-made gas mask: they were coming and they were masks not just for parade. Even the automatic pistol they were making us doctors and medical officers carry. I could feel mine pressing against the back of the chair. There were arrests to be taken for not keeping it in plain sight. But Rinaldi carried only the holster stuffed with toilet paper. Mine was a gun in order, and I had felt
even a gunner until I had learned how to use it; it was a 7.65 Astra with a short barrel, firing it jumped so much that I never risked hitting the target, but I had had some practice making an effort to aim well and to master that soaring of his. I had finally managed to hit it at one meter, then at twenty paces, and then I had felt the whole ridiculousness of carrying the gun; but eventually I paid no more attention to it and kept it bouncing on my hip with no special impression except a vague sense of shame when I encountered Anglo-Saxons.
I sat; meanwhile, in my chair and across a small table a planter was watching me with an air of disapproval as I looked at the marble planting, the columns with busts, and waited for Miss Barkley. The frescoes were not bad. All frescoes get better when they begin to wrinkle. I saw Catherine Barkley coming toward me and stood up. She looked less tall now as she walked but she remained beautiful.
As we walked out, the planter followed us with his eyes. I walked behind her and as soon as I was outside she asked: - Where have you been? -
We had left the driveway and were walking under the trees. I took her hands and stopped to kiss her.
We took to a secluded driveway, and a tree prevented us from going further.
I knew that I didn't love Catherine Barkley and I had no idea that I loved her; it was the game of all time, a kind of bridge where instead of cards you play words; and like in bridge, you play for money or for another stake; we hadn't determined the stake yet. That was fine with me.
He lowered his gaze to the grass.
But the game doesn't go. -
I pressed on his hand. - Dear Catherine. -
We kissed, but he suddenly broke away.
7.
The next day on my way back down from the first hospital, I stopped the car at the "sorting" where the wounded and sick were divided according to the destination marked on the folders. I had driven and remained at the wheel while the mechanic thought about the folders. It was hot, and the sky stretched in a blue light over the dusty white road. I stayed perched on the Fiat's high seat, not thinking about anything. A regiment passed by and I watched. Soldiers were dripping with sweat, some wore helmets but most kept them hanging from their backpacks, helmets were too wide, generally, and they came down all the way over the ears; all officers wore helmets, theirs had a more practical shape. Half the Basilicata Brigade was passing by; I recognized them by their red and white insignia. With much delay came those who had not been able to keep up with the platoon; they were drenched, dusty and tired. Some looked very shabby. The last one came limping, stopped and sat on the side of the road. I got off and went to him.
After looking at me, he stood up again:
The mechanic came out with the folders of those in the ambulance.
