the outsider lives and dies

[randall patrick]

From Colin Wilson's The Outsider:

"The Hemingway short stories after 1930 often contain sentences that can be taken as fragments of the Hemingway credo; there is to begin with, Frederick Henry when Catherine is dying:

'Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn...they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.'

"Or the reflections of the heartless cripple in 'The Gambler, the Nun and the Radio':

'Religion is the opium of the people....and now economics is the opium of the people, along with patriotism...What about sexual intercourse, was that an opium of the people? But drink was a sovereign opium, oh, an excellent opium....And some people prefer the radio, another opium of the people'.

"There is the old waiter of 'A Clean, Well-lighted Place', who prays: 'Hail nothing, full of nothing, nothing is with thee.'

"Here the encounter with death has become an encounter with the meaninglessness of life, an encounter with nothingness. The only value that remains is courage; Santiago in 'The Old Man and the Sea' with his 'a man can be destroyed but not defeated.' And the value of courage is doubtful. Death negates it and the causes that inspire it are usually 'opium of the people.'"

And:

"The examples Hemingway selects for his 'field of observation' are all violent and bloody:

'The first thing you found about the dead was that, hit quickly enough, they died like animals. I do not know, but most men die like animals, not men...'

"Speaking of natural death, he comments: 'So now I want to see the death of any so-called humanist...and see the noble exits they make.'

"'The Natural History of The Dead' is hemingway's clearest exposition of the Existentialist position, and the key sentence, 'most men die like animals, not men,' is his answer to the humanist notion of the perfectibility of man. He cannot believe in God....because the idea looks thin against the raw facts of existence. The nearest approach to religous ideals in his work is the sentence 'he should find things he cannot lose.' This idea is not followed up, or rather, is followed up by a protracted demonstration that there is nothing man cannot lose. This doesn't mean that life has no value; on the contrary, life is the only value; it is the ideas that are valueless."


[emphasis my own]



This "literary mood" more or less encapsulates my own view that, regarding the meaning of life, it is surely entangled inextricably in the following irreconcilable paradox:

1] because we die life means nothing
2] because we die life means everything

Forunately, however, there are many more "opiums of the people" in the 21st century to distract us from the grueling philosophical task of giving a damn one way or the other. Let alone resolving the quandary once and for all. In fact, you might say that Hemingway's life was a monument to the most intoxicating opium of them all: actually living your life to the fullest.

Hemingway was no philosopher. Those who are, however, should, perhaps, be so lucky, right?

Well, some of them.


rp