To wage war,” says the partisan Augustín, “you need nothing but intelligence. But to win, you need intelligence and material.” His group acts behind enemy lines, carrying out bomb attacks against trains or bridges in order to cut off supplies for the front. The intimidating formations of enemy bombers can be seen in the sky; in the mountains, the ill-equipped fighters are chased by cavalry, which can count on air support and artillery. You also need a lot of idealism to fight against an army that seems overpowering.
Anyone reading “For Whom the Bell Tolls” these days, Ernest Hemingway’s masterful novel about the Spanish Civil War, can’t help but relate it to the war in Ukraine. The heroism, the willingness to make sacrifices, the commitment to a free, democratic country, the international sympathy and solidarity in the fight against a criminal attacker, the unequal balance of power, all of this has returned this year – under completely different signs.
The new translation of the novel by Werner Schmitz (Rowohlt, 624 pages, 30 euros) that has just been published also reads so contemporary because the war is portrayed as a test of the soul, as a primal human situation that leaves no one the right to remain uninvolved . Withdrawal is not an option, nor is neutrality.
Robert Jordan, Hemingway’s main character, is an American demolitions expert who volunteers to fight for the good, the Republican cause. At the beginning he pushes dynamite towards the partisans with two backpacks in order to blow up a strategically important bridge for the forthcoming offensive. Jordan appears to be a comrade who is convinced of his mission, although he suspects that the life-threatening action will not change the course of the war.
Hemingway went to Spain in 1937 as a war correspondent. When he began the novel after his return in the spring of 1939, Madrid had already fallen and Franco had triumphed. Then Hitler invaded Poland and defeated France – fascism seemed to be on the rise everywhere. The melancholy shadow of failure is already lying on this novel from 1940. But this only makes the resistance in a supposedly lost position all the more compelling; it may be futile, but not meaningless.
In the novel, this is underlined by the love story that Jordan experiences with Maria, who joined the fighters after the fascists had murdered her parents and she herself had become the victim of systematic rape – this too timelessly topical methods of criminal regimes. In a painful sense, Mary embodies the Passion story of the oppressed, defiled Spanish people. In this great figure, Hemingway also anticipates the terrible things that are yet to come as a result of the Nazi victory.
The ecstatic days and nights of happiness experienced by the two lovers before the battle overarch the tragic events: at the core of the novel, which already bears the fateful point in time in the title, is the abolition of the temporal in the fulfilled moment, in the eternity of transcendence, which also encompasses all the unlived life that is only possible and imagined: “What they would never have, they now had. They had the now and the before and the always and the now and now and now,” as Hemingway sums up the climax of their last night in staggering speech.
It is part of Hemingway’s greatness and historical clarity that he describes the grave crimes of the Republican side in no less detail. And also – in the character of a bloodthirsty Soviet political commissar – the hunt for supposed “deviants” of all kinds is not concealed.
In general, killing for a just cause is anything but taken lightly. “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is also a novel about the moral gray area of every war. That killing may be justified by higher ends does not absolve the soldier of guilt. This bitter insight also makes the book timelessly true.
The inner monologues in which Jordan fights his self-doubt might go through the mind of a modern-day Ukrainian militiaman: “Why do you never imagine winning? You’ve been on the defensive for so long you can’t even imagine. … Don’t be so naive. And remember, as long as we can tie down the fascists here, they won’t get ahead. They can’t attack other countries until they’re through with us, and they’ll never be through with us. If the French stand by us, if they at least keep the border open, and if we get planes from America, they’ll never be able to handle us. Never if we have just a little help. Armed with good weapons, this people will fight on forever.”
The fact that Ukraine is also fighting for the freedom and democracy of Europe, indeed of the entire West, is one of the main reasons for the ongoing support in every respect. The novel is now required reading because of this message: to praise the Ukrainians for their bravery, but otherwise want to stay out of it is a cynical attitude. Before the attack, Robert Jordan said to himself: “Kack radios, we could use those. Someday we will have them. But we don’t have any yet. Now keep your eyes open and do what you have to do.”
Ernest Hemingway: “For whom the hour tolls”. Translated from the English by Werner Schmitz. Rowohlt, 624 pages, 30 euros.
