A farewell to her

I just finished reading Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms again, because even though it's described as a war novel, it's mainly a novel about love. And let's face it, I'm looking for solace. Yet I was looking for a particular passage (no, not that overhyped, overtattoed, decontextualised Instagram trope), but when the page finally came, I was confused, it winded me. The words struck me more personally than ever before. It was my second time reading it, and a decade earlier...I was less experienced. But now I realise how much less experienced I was. The sentiments Hemingway expressed, here and now they were mine...up until just a few weeks ago. There is no denying this experience greatly enriched me, and to paraphrase Woolf: I welcomed the wild horse in me. Here's the passage in question, halfway down Chapter 34. I sure hope you can relate...as even though these things have passed, they have been, and they were good. Probably the best.


“That night at the hotel, in our room with the long empty hall outside and our shoes outside the door, a thick carpet on the floor of the room, outside the windows the rain falling and in the room light and pleasant and cheerful, then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal.

We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. It has only happened to me like that once.

I have been alone while I was with many girls and that is the way you can be most lonely. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”